A political blog written by Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, has been found to be riddled with spelling mistakes. The Labour MP’s website was also found to contain typing errors and grammatical oversights. The mispellings of Mr Knight, who was educated at Cambridge University, include “maintainence”, “convicned”, “curently”, “similiar”, “foce”, “pernsioners”, “reccess” and “archeaological”.
Mr Knight, who is responsible for raising education standards, also clearly has problems with the “i before e, except after c” spelling rule taught to primary school pupils. He spelled “achieving” and “received” incorrectly. Mr Knight, 43, gives his opinions on local and national issues regularly on his website, which reveals he attended the fee-paying Eltham College, in Mottingham, south east London. He went on to study geography, and social and political sciences at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 1984 to 1987.
Mr Knight, MP for Dorset South, said: “When I was at school the teachers told me to always check my work. While my spelling is generally pretty good, I need to focus more on checking.” Rob Wilson, the Conservative education spokesman, said: “He will be disappointed with his efforts in class but I’m sure he’ll make every effort to improve now teacher has noticed he’s falling behind.”
Blimey! This explains a lot.
I heard that spelling ability is inversely related to intelligence. Of course, I’m a horrable speller.
Spelling mistakes or just poor typing?
If you publish something, it reflects on who you are.
In his case, rather computer illiterate for not using Firefox with it’s built-in spell checker.
Since I touch type, I often inverse I and E, because they are different hands.
The Firefox spellchecker fixes it for me.
At the very least, Jim Knight could have Cut & Pasted to and from Word, and have Word fix up his text.
This also proves the following math theorem:
|PR| = PR
Jim is quite famous now! Google:
Results 1 – 10 of about 15,300,000 for jim knight
Even more so than JCD!
Results 1 – 10 of about 389,000 for john dvorak
[If you had typed in John C Dvorak, you would have gotten 715,000. – ed.]
Wow. That’s quite the billboard ad.
i before r except after c is not the rule… that is the exception..
also firefox does not have a spellchecker…
it is a SPELLING CHECKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! get it freaking right ya boob tube-ers!!!!
đ
now back to my black arts, where i use a spell checker to check my spells…
how many spells,
can a spell check, check,
if a spell czech
could spell cheque??
While spelling and grammar are important, they should not be the be all and end all. As pointed out, most word processors have adequate spell checkers already. BUT, if you are publishing your work, and especially if your reputation depends upon what you write, have someone edit it for you. If you made the error in the first place, the chances are good you won’t notice even after you check it.
All the minister needs to do is to hire a non-bimbo (non-“Page3”) secretary/typist, to transcribe his dictation. Or at least teach her how to use a spellchecker.
AS MENTIONED…
Im almost 50, and KNOW what spell check is..
there is even a grammatical Checker.
#8 – I’d leave them gramma checkers alone. They ain’t no good.
7,
I can’t believe you said that.
One thing that English suffers from is context and clarity. If you are not clear on your context and clarity all kinds of nuances can be derived from your text. Plus, there are some things in English which are exceedingly complex when compared to “foreign” languages…
For example… You can be plural and singular, but without the context it’s not clear. Similarly, and this is only because I cook, mirepoix is French term for celery, onions and carrots fried in butter. This trinity shows up in many languages as a specific word. For some reason, English requires me to say “onions celery and carrots fried in butter”.
English is powerful in that it is very adaptive. But, at the same time, everyone writes English as if they are speaking directly to another individual. Without the hand gestures and eyebrow movements, you lose too much context.
#11
To prove your point in a roundabout way I’ll point out the irony in your post. You referenced mirepoix as a trinity when in fact trinity is used to describe the prefered blend of bell peppers, onions, and celery used primarily in southern cooking.
More irony ensues. I happen to a piss pore speller and while reading this earlier I realized I had a Hardiee’s job sitting on my other screen. You see I’m a sign designer by trade and even though I can’t spell for sh*t I still manage to do my job well every day.
Notice the person who wrote the article misspelled “misspelling”. Sheesh.
And #2, despite a close friend of mine who is a genius and orthopedic surgeon who cannot spell any better than a 3rd grader, there is a loose correlation between spelling and intelligence. Higher intelligence tends to lead to more reading which tends to lead to better spelling.
#12–unt==because I eat and travel, I have always known mirepoix to be as described. Your combo is “The Holy Tinity” based on cajun cooking. Not the same thing at all.
When I cook, I leave those ingredients in my stock whole or blended according to the meal. Hate wasting food. Those frenchies will do it at the drop of a baguette.
#14
I could have written that better. I wasn’t arguing with #11, I was simply trying to point out the many meanings the word trinity can have. Plurality is a bitch especially in the english language.
#11 – Named
>>Similarly, and this is only because I cook,
>>mirepoix is French term for celery, onions
>>and carrots fried in butter.
Mirepoix can be raw, roasted, or sautĂ©ed in butter. And the only reason it’s one word “in French” is because it was popularized in the 18th century by Charles-Pierre-Gaston François de LĂ©vis, duc de LĂ©vis-Mirepoix. I guess they figured it was easier to just call it “mirepoix”, than to write all that shit out.
Thanks Mr. Mustard. I can’t even spell that last name, but the info is cool. I’m used to a roux, with garlic and onions (and maybe some peppers), for which there is no single word of which I know. To me, it’s just “cook one up!”
18,
Well, regardless of your social standing I think that you’ll find the ability to convey your thought clearly is paramount. Your professor may be a “horrible writer” but I’ll bet that when it counts he/she can clearly indicate exactly their meaning. And that is the key to proper language use. It doesn’t matter WHICH language, but English is uniquely fucked up in that it is very difficult to learn and use properly. I’m trying to think of another language that doesn’t have clear gender indicators… English has, what, four of them? He, His, She, Hers and that’s about it… Plurality and singularity are also vague… And rules… The only rule to English is that everything is an exception.
16,
Mirepoix is “French” but most European languages have adopted it and made a word for themselves. Three basic ingredients, whether fried or not is a trinity used in most European meals and they adapted a particular word for it. For some odd reason, English, which creates more words per second, doesn’t have it.
12,
Spelling is one part. Are you able to clearly convey your thoughts?
#19 – Named
>>Mirepoix is âFrenchâ but most European
>>languages have adopted it and made a word for
>>themselves.
Do you mean they translated it into their own language, and have different word than mirepoix for it? How doe you say mirepoix in German or Spanish or Italian or Greek?
And I’d say that English has pretty much “adopted” the word. It’s in most English dictionaries. No need to make up a new word – there’s a perfectly good word already. It’s just that many people don’t know about “mirepoix” for the same reason they don’t know about “reductions”; they don’t cook
20,
Yes. Exactly. They have adopted it natively. In Polish, its Wloszczyzna.
Spelling and grammar errors are like little speed bumps in the text, requiring the reader to slow down to make a little adjustment, either consciously or subconsciously. In some circumstances, the reader even has to back up and reread a portion of the context to be sure the correct repair was made, as it may not always be clear. For this reason, sloppy writing is sometimes seen as a sign of disregard for the reader.
Some people can be more easily forgiven for their slipshod writing than the Education Minister should be. Off with his head!
22,
Well put.
#23 Named, thank you. I even checked the spelling twice, as the soon-to-be-headless Education Minister will regret not having done đ
WOW!!!
We must all be self conscious about our spelling and grammar as we would rather allow the subject to drift into food.
I’ll eat to that.
đ
#23 – Named
>>Yes. Exactly. They have adopted it natively.
>>In Polish, its Wloszczyzna.
According to the local gourmets of kuchnia polska, wloszczyzna can be a variety of mixed vegetables, including cabbages, leeks, and celery. And it’s named after “Wlochy”, the Polish name of Italy, because Italian chefs introduced these vegetables into kuchia polska during the Renaissance.
If one wants to refer to carrots, celery, and onions fried in butter, it might just be safer to say “carrots, celery, and onions fried in butter”. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting raw or roasted ingredients with mirepoix, or cabbages and leeks with wloszczyzna, to the exclusion of The Trinity of carrots, celery, and onions.
Maybe that’s why English never came up with its own term for mirepoix or wloszczyzna; they’re too non-specific to be useful, since they seem to translate to “a bunch of different veggies, cooked, raw, roasted, or sautĂ©ed”.