In honor of tonight’s Scripps National Spelling Bee final, take a stab at these spelling tests – Scripps Test, MSNBC Test.
posted on May 30, 2008 - View this thread

Immediately, Herson spotted an offense—a second-floor awning outside a tarot shop that advertised "Energy Stone's." They climbed the stairs to the second floor and approached a middle-age women with a quizzical expression. "We happened to notice the sign for energy stones," Deck said, "and there happens to be an extra apostrophe. 'Stone's' doesn't need the apostrophe."

"And?" she asked, her voice flat with annoyance.

"And we wanted to bring it to your attention," Deck said.

A look inside the daring lives of Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, vanguards of the Typo Eradication Advancement League.
posted on May 21, 2008 - View this thread

Zip up that dangling modifier--it's National Grammar Day! Let the ranting begin...
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - View this thread

Man buys Allsop, relists it as Allsopp - proving that on eBay, presentation is everything. via b3ta
posted on Aug 31, 2007 - View this thread

Evan M. O'Dorney, a 13-year-old speller from Danville, Calif., won the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, with the final word "serrefine". Here is an interesting interview with the winner. Did you say my name wrong?
posted on Jun 7, 2007 - View this thread

The caferteria had garbage an all tables. At my middle school in Staten Island, thought the dean, this cannot stand. So he sent home a letter.
posted on May 3, 2007 - View this thread

A CAPTCHA to weed out certain potential users of the internet.
posted on Apr 4, 2007 - View this thread

"Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears?" At Conservapedia, a "conservative encyclopedia you can trust," you can learn that "faith" is a concept "exclusive to Christianity," and about how Wikipedia is biased in matters such as its description of the Bell Trade Act of 1946, its gossipy treatment of the private life of NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, and its seeming acceptance of evolution. The Wikipedia bias entry also complains of a "rant" against the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group for which Conservapedia founder (and son of conservative gadfly Phyllis Schafly) Andrew Schlafly has worked. Signups are here; its take on evolution is criticized here.
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

Word. Eighth-grader Katharine Close has finally won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on her fifth attempt. She beat out 274 other competitors and won with the word ursprache, sounding it out live on national television. If spelling out rarely used historical-linguistic jargon seems tough, try weltschmerz on for size. That's the word runner-up Finola Mei Hwa Hackett stumbled on. While your at it, why not take a look at the entire word list and see how many you can get, or even just recognize. Prior escapades in spelling documented here, here [YouTube], and if you want to head out to theaters, here.
posted on Jun 2, 2006 - View this thread

Aargh!
posted on Jan 7, 2006 - View this thread

John Walker's method How and when to pay attention -- by the author of the Evil Empires bumper sticker and other treasures.
posted on Aug 26, 2005 - View this thread

Walter Miller's homepage Picked up recently via kottke.org, this is a years-old webpage (not updated recently) detailing the miserable details of poor Walter's white trash existence. It deserves to be read by a whole new generation. The art of misspelling is taken to new heights.
posted on Jul 30, 2005 - View this thread

Some counterarguments to those who argue against spelling reform in English put forth by Justin B. Rye. Here are some interesting sites on spelling reform: John J. Reilly's page on Spelling Reform. English Spelling Reform. American Literacy Council's Spelling Matters and Spelling Chaos and finally Spelling Reform @ Everything2.com. Many well-regarded anglophones have tried to bring about spelling reform, such as Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt.
posted on Jun 12, 2005 - View this thread

Tools for Editors. Find all kinds of useful language-related links; take a side trip to a site where you can recall the joys of diagramming sentences, corral misplaced apostrophes, check your spelling, set free pet peeves, or read lovely essays on the English language written by a retired professor of Dutch.
posted on Mar 19, 2005 - View this thread

MetaFilter... can you spell it? An exercise in co-operative play.
posted on Jan 2, 2005 - View this thread

The Simplified Spelling Society. Finally, a cause I can really get behind. More.
posted on Jun 9, 2003 - View this thread

Yesterday I saw a wonderful movie - Spellbound - a documentary about the annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee - which won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW. It explores the dynamics surrounding kids and parents desire for success in the competition, reconciliation with failure and differing models of education, competition and success. When I was a kid I was on the TV show It's Academic - along with lots of other famous faces. While you may want to make fun of the show - I still remember it fondly. My parents were happy to see me compete but generally unconcerned about the outcome in any way. Now we've got Math Olympics, the Academic Decathlon and a host of other competitive ventures. Any other MeFites remember school days competitions and the drive to succeed?
posted on Oct 21, 2002 - View this thread

"I was very lucky that she triped over my uncontios body beried under piles of ash..." A saga of epic proportions: some moron living inside his "Morrowind" RPG computer game writes his gameplay out as a novel. Welcome to a capsule indictment of American education and the consequences of the new "American Way." Thank heavens we don't live in Morrowind, where most people can't "right nor reed."
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

Britney Spears. How do I spell thee? Let me count the ways...
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread

Freespeling.com (with one el). Because only 17% of native English speakers can spell "height", "necessary", "accommodation", "separate", "sincerely", and "business" correctly. Good idea or bad idea?
posted on Apr 5, 2001 - View this thread

UK row as kids are told to adopt incorrect but 'international' spelling A row has broken out in the UK as the organisation in charge of school examinations told pupils to drop traditional spelling of scientific words in favour of Americanised (wrong) ones.
Surely Sulphur comes from a Greek word which involves the letter phi (not fi) and is therefore the correct spelling...
posted on Nov 26, 2000 - View this thread

Spelling Bee has a sting in the tail... The highly influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has abandoned the much-heralded German spelling reforms, arguing that the attempt to simplify and "democratise" the language has been a costly mistake. At the same time, though, the new Duden is accused of including too many English words such as "downloaden, Wellness and chatten, Backstage, Smiley and Trash", allegedly indebted to "advertisers and cyber geeks".Given that MeFi readers are, generally, from the two cultures separated by a common language, it's an interesting case study of state intervention gone wrong...
posted on Aug 2, 2000 - View this thread

Well, I'm compleetly fed up with english speling for everything. Its so dammed inconsistant and ilogical, Ill never get the hang of it. Forchunately, now theres a way to express yourselfs using chinese-like english characters. It's called Yingzi and now you can write english as quickly as you can write for Fellini or for Peach
posted on Jul 23, 2000 - View this thread