Just think about it for a sec.

Along about 1960, when I was in the third grade, I had a teacher by the name of Ms. Butler. She was rather old at the time, as a matter of fact, everyone her age seemed rather old back then, so I'm not sure how old she was when I was in her class. I don't remember a lot about her or recall too many conversations that I had with her, except for one incident concerning my spelling. She made an example of me in front of our class concerning a story that I had written. It was printed on that strange lined paper made especially for getting the proper height of the small letters versus the capitals. She was real nasty about not getting the individual letters up to the lines and I caught on to that real early. She held up my paper with both hands and told the entire class that I had submitted a paper with no spelling errors. Evidently the remainder of the class was not near as perfect and she really let them have it. Ms. Butler let out a tongue lashing about the importance of spelling, the likes of which I haven't heard since. There was one sentence that I do remember to this day and I often think about it while I'm writing at work and at home. She claimed that "the use of improper words and incorrect spelling make you look more ignorant than you actually are" (at least that's my best recollection from 47 years ago). I was always fairly good at spelling and I attribute that to my parents, but after listening to Ms. Butler's rant that day, I paid a lot more attention to the details of choosing the proper words and also spelling them correctly. One look at my picture and you can see that I could ill afford to look any more ignorant.

I've notice over the years, as I have read various writings, that I'm appalled at the misuse of words like their and there and they're, your and yore and you're, colonel and kernel, here and hear, do and due and a host of other homonyms. I am also surprised to see how many words are misspelled. I could understand the misuse of some words, if the reason was the sole reliance on software spell checks. But in some of the same writings, I find wrong words and misspelled words. Ms. Butler, as magnificent as she was, just didn't spread her influence to enough people and she would, no doubt, be deliriously rolling over in her grave today (of course, I'm assuming that she has passed on), if she saw the utter and absolute disrespect for the correct spelling of the most simple and inelaborate words in use today.

Just a piece of advice from someone who had the opportunity to benefit from Ms. Butler's stern leadership and guidance. When writing anything for public consumption, enter your information into a word processor and use the spell check tool. Then, you should check for misused homonyms. Finally, the last thing you should do is to read your work (out loud and slowly) to hear if it sounds like what you were actually trying to convey to the reader.

What is the morel of this story? If ewe don't paws to Czech what yew rat, you will seam to be a lot moor ignorant than you actually look.