9th March 2011

Occasionally something comes back to haunt you.

In my first School, a Church of England Primary School, pupils were given scrap paper to write on until their handwriting and spelling was considered to have progressed sufficiently for them to be given an exercise book.

I was at that school for two years and when I left, age seven, I was still writing on scrap paper. Fortunately in my new school I was given an exercise book on my first day and made rapid progress learning the basic rules. One in particular was drummed into us by our teacher.

'i' before 'e', except after 'c'.

Yesterday I sat staring at the screen, having just written 'wielded' as 'weilded'. I knew something was wrong but simply could not see what, so I hit the send button and then it became clear I had broken a simple and long standing rule. Of course facebook no longer allows you to correct what you have written so there I am, exposed to the world as an illiterate.

Just as well it was facebook and not a spelling bee.

I can well imagine the wrath that such a simple spelling mistake would have incurred at school. Indeed I could well imagine that if I had been testing the grandchildren, an occasional part of baby sitting duties, on their spellings, I would have been hot on 'wield' and come down hard on 'weild'.

It is, perhaps, one of the few occasions when the facebook shorthand, LOL, would have been appropriate.

But I have noticed that I am not the only one for whom typo's are becoming more common and more bizarre. Recently I have seen on separate occasions and once in a newspaper advertisement, a reference to a complimentary therapist. I imagine that such a therapist's opening line would be, 'Come in, you look very well today, I especially like the way you have co-ordinated the separates in you wardrobe, and they do suit you'. I imagine that a complimentary therapist would be easy to get along with although, if they were too complimentary or their compliments became too glib, they could become irritating.

So: to compliment or to complement? They sound the same, almost look the same, but they are different words with different meanings and should not be confused, especially in an advert for a job. Who was responsible for proof reading the advert?

Either people approach the keyboard more casually, and/or standards are deteriorating rapidly as a result of the new technologies. Occasionally I read a facebook message that appears to have been written in a completely new language, one that I have never seen before and which could have been devised on a far planet or in a distant universe.

So I hang my head in shame. I knew that something was amiss, I failed to use the spellchecker, as I have just done, (of course it spotted and drew my attention to the error imediately); and I pressed the send button anyway, only to realise exactly what shocking sin of commission I had committed. To make the error worse I had used the word wield with regard to my grandchildren's pancake making exploits I hope that doesn't make them feel guilty by association, I take full responsibility.

As is sometimes noted in authors' prefaces and dedications, they take full credit for the success of the pancake party, the spelling failure was mine and mine alone! So back to the scrap paper for me ...........