Spelling is only a part of the communications problem.
A friend recently related the following to me pertaining to his childs new school room teacher. His child was home schooled until the 5th grade and learned to write in cursive. Immediately after their first homework assignment, the teacher confronted the child about using cursive writing and demanded that it not be used in the future. Turned out that the teacher couldnt read the cursive text.
If sheep is plural what is the singular form? This reminds me of the old joke about the zoo keeper who wanted two of the species Alces alces. Not knowing what the plural of the common name was he wrote to the purveyor of such animals “Please send me an adult moose and, while you are at, it send another one.”
Ron, that is incredibly sad. I think I just might approach the school - principal, board - and try to resolve that issue in another way besides a “demand” that the child dumb down.
My only reason for making the comment about sheeps’ versus sheep’s is that English is a complicated language and it is really impressive when we get it 99% correct. I am sure there have been typos (or is that typo’s?) in my postings. I think the main thing is that we want to make our work look as if we checked it over once or twice before issuing it, and misspellings can send the wrong message.
Misspellings and bad punctuation/grammar definitely send messages: the owner of the documents doesn’t care, can’t be bothered to check, or doesn’t know better. Careless errors lead me to question “what else is wrong or carelessly done”? It’s usually easy to distinguish between typos and true errors. Words like “hte” are clearly typos, and I’m likely to forgive those. But as in the example I posted earlier in this thread, “repelling” is definitely a case of the writer not knowing the correct word (even if I did get a laugh out of it).
Greta, you are so right about English being complicated. German, by comparison, is relatively easy. I guess the complication is what makes the language so versatile and, in some ways, fun. Shakespeare with his clever turn-of-phase and Norm Crosby with his malapropisms sure had fun with it. By the way, I wonder why it is “sure” and not “Shure.” Perhaps the microphone company already had a copyright on the latter. 
Yikes! Why is this image so large?
“Sugar” is the only word in the English language that starts in “su” but uses the “sh” sound. I’m sure of that fact.
BTW, I’m presenting “Effective Writing for Construction Professionals” at CONSTRUCT in October, and probably won’t mention spelling because of time constraints. Mis-punctuation is more likely to cause confusion in writing than misspelling. Spelling errors are humorous (see above) but proper punctuation saves lives:
“Let’s eat, Grandma!”
“Let’s eat Grandma!”
“BTW, I’m presenting “Effective Writing for Construction Professionals” at CONSTRUCT in October”
George, I cannot think of a better person to give that presentation. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend but the Houston Chapter Foundation has given two grants to emerging professionals in the chapter to cover their expenses for CONSTRUCT. I will be “shoore” to urge them to attend your presentation.
Remember that the Construction Specifications Practice Guide states, “Sentences should be constructed so that the misplacement or elimination of a punctuation mark will not change the meaning.”
Of course, without trying to dig up the old Oxford comma debate, it also says, “Commas should be used after each item in a series, including the item preceding a conjunction, and in other locations where the clarity of the statement will be improved.”
So while you should avoid the sentence structure that would lead to cannibalism if your specifications would need to have such a statement commanding Grandma to eat to eat with you, you should also include the comma if it helps the clarity of the sentence (saving Grandma’s life would be important clarity I would think).
