Imagine You Can Spell Like a Whiz Kid?

Do you ever watch the annual National Spelling Bee? It is composed of the best spellers from grade schools around the country who spell words most of us have never heard before. These kids are phenoms to the max! The NSBee is so popular, they made a book out of it — and a movie. So how can you learn to spell as well as these youngsters? Or at least well enough to please your readers/boss/family/Internet friends?

Easy as 1-2-3! Three things you can do to improve your spelling all scream PAY ATTENTION.

1) Become aware of “root” words, other words that mean almost the same thing or are derived from a similar source. Let’s say you want to spell a word that means “able to be imagined”. Is it imaginible or imaginable? Think of a similar word, such as “imagination”. Do you see the “a” that follows the “n”? There’s your clue.

2) Be sure you pronounce the word right. Some words are mutilated in speech because we don’t all learn from the same speech source. One of our Presidents often spoke of “our gub-ment” (meaning government — three syllables.) Another President had trouble with nuclear, pronouncing it “nuc-u-lar” (as many others do). Notice how often those whiz kids ask for the pronunciation.

3) Look it up. Keep a spell-check app on your electronic carry-alls and refer to it when in doubt. After looking up a word a couple of times, it may sink into your imaginary dictionary-in-your-head.

Come on, show your moxy by paying attention to the way words are spelled. You will soon realize the benefits of being the kind of person who pays attention to details and can handle your language. That's your PAY BACK for PAYING ATTENTION.

Incredibly Yours

When did we start using incredible to mean “very very”?

As in:

“We spent an incredible day at the beach.”

“You are incredibly beautiful.”

 “She earns an incredible salary.”

Incredible means “unbelievable, unable to be believed”! What makes a trip to the beach unbelievable, especially if it’s a sunny day?

Personally speaking, I can believe how beautiful you are, but why would anyone say they could not believe it?

And large salaries are not only within the area of belief, but very satisfying to earn.

Come on, listen to yourself and the words you use. And believe them. I find it entirely incredible that U.S.-ers cannot grasp understanding of the language they grew up with.

Why Grammar?

As a grammarian and word person, I am constantly asked why grammar is important. “Why do I have to understand what words go together and which ones don’t?” “What's the difference if I use double negatives?” “Why do we even have apostrophes — much less, how do we use them?”

Having order to the way we communicate by mouth and writing is as important as having some order to the way we communicate via the Internet and email. Sure there are different systems, or styles. But computer-ese makes communication between computers — and therefore between people — possible. If your computer cannot talk to mine, we cannot get together on anything.

Grammar is like the coding in computers, in that knowing how it works makes it work better. Read a good book about language: The Anarchist’s Guide to Grammar, by Val Dumond, or The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. I guarantee you’ll come away with more respect for the guidelines offered through the order of language.

No, it’s not British English or Australian English or Canadian English — not in the good old US of A! Which is why we in the U.S. have the most beautiful and flexible language in the world. Why? Because it is composed of all the other languages — with all their styles and systems in one room, together.

Bless us all, everyone, for our language and knowing how to order it!