Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer exasperated by years of correcting the same spelling mistakes of his students, has argued common spelling mistakes should be accepted as variant spellings. These include:
• arguement for argument
• twelth for twelfth
• truely for truly
Ken’s suggestion is that the UK accepts the 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words should simply be accepted as alternative.
Interesting Idea. But I imagine that the possibilities for misspellings are limitless. If we accept the first 20 words, then surely another 20 will just pop up to take their place?
Following the story, CBBC asked kids ‘Does Good Spelling Matter?’ There’s a mish-mash of replies, with views ranging from ‘Oh yes’ to ‘No way’. I found two comments particularly interesting. First, Charlie, aged 12 stated that
“If a word is spelt wrong but you can read it, it’s fine.”
Obviously, communication is more important to Charlie than nit-picking over spelling. Ben, 13 observed:
“Well, I don’t think that it matters a lot, because I was reading this thing from Manchester University and it said as long as the 1st and last letters are correct, and the rest is muddled up, it looks the same. Try it yourself… E.g: because or bcaeuse.”
I wouldn’t want to be the English teacher trying to argue with Ben’s logic. A few of the comments mentioned that good spellers get more ‘respect’, which was seen as a reason for learning to spell better. But for a generation who are fluent in street speak and txt speak, communication is key.
p.s. each and every comment on the CBBC post was beautifully spelt…now either only spelling geniuses felt felt equipped to post a comment, or the CBBC team cleaned up any spelling nasties 
