Dear Hearts and Gentle People

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

I did it again. I misspelled (I hope that's right) a word and was given a warning by the trusty Word Police.

Take note, dear hearts. Adult sexual perverts who prey on children are not "pedifiles" but rather "pedophiles." My sincere apologies for the gross spelling error.

Pedifiles are actually emery boards for the feet.

I was absolutely "maw-di-fied," as my mother likes to say, when I was called on the mistake and was at once reminded of "Hollywood" Henderson's comment about football great Terry Bradshaw's intelligence. "He couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the C and the T."

Ouch.

Daddy used to tell me, "Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean or how to spell them. You'll make a fool of yourself."

Ouch again.

Let's face it. Spelling is difficult. In some languages, like Italian for instance, words are spelled pretty much like they sound. Not so for English. Take one of the most common sounds in the English language for instance. The sound 'uh' trips a lot of us up. There are othuh ones of course but this is a biggie.

'Uh' can be spelled with an 'e', or an 'a', an 'o', or a 'u'. This is why that great big animal at the circus should be an "eluhphuhnt" but it isn't. The centre is thuh midduhl and the middle is thuh centuh.

The fact is, in English you can not spell with your ears. You have to spell with your eyes. The colossal failure of the Department of Education's Writing-to-Read program is proof of that. There is no easy way out when it comes to spelling.

Why then, some of you may ask, does correct spelling matter at all? It matters for several reasons. The first one is that a spelling mistake can make it impossible for the reader to understand what the writer is trying to say.

'He flounted his degree.' Does that mean that he flaunted it, showed it off, or does it mean that he flouted it, or treated it with contempt? Spell it right and you'll find the answer. As the word stands, we have no idea what it means.

The second reason correct spelling is important is a simple one. It just doesn't look good. It's true, some people don't care about spelling correctly but many do and those people just don't think it reflects well on a person's intelligence if he is a poor speller.

Another reason is of a technical nature. Make a spelling mistake in the medical field and you could kill somebody. A nurse making notes on a medical chart had best be careful when spelling either 'hypotension' or 'hypertension' or he/she might end up making a lethal mistake.

A good habit to form in checking your spelling is to refer to the dictionary. Of course, one might ask, if you can't spell the dang word, how are you going to look it up? Or, if a word in the dictionary is misspelled, how will one know?

Andrew Jackson once said, "It's a d- n poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word" and Mark Twain said it this way: "I don't give a d- n for a man who can only spell a word one way."

Apparently the two men were not very good spellers. I, on the other hand (despite my recent goof), think I am.

An interesting Chinese custom requires that when a Chinese person writes a letter, he always makes one deliberate spelling mistake. This is meant as a sign of humility, to acknowledge that the writer does not consider himself a perfect human being.

And now that I've had time to think about it, surely I must have intended to misspell the word 'pedophile.' That had to be it. I knew better. I was just showing great humility and an uncanny graciousness of heart. Gracious and humble. Yep, that's me.

(At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)