Friday, June 1, 2012

The Evil Spelling Test

Teresa Nielsen-Hayden shares a list of spelling demons, ideal for throwing at the side you would like to see lose a spelling bee...

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013957.html

If you can hear these words read and type them correctly without looking them up (and if you're a student) you're a solid candidate for the National Spelling Championship. I was. The easiest way to sabotage me on a spelling test is to insist on all U.S. or all U.K. preferences; some words look right to me one way, some the other, and I agree with at least two twentieth-century authors who've observed in print that "gray" and "grey" are two different colors. But the word I tend to spell not just exotically, but just plain wrong, is "idiosyncrasy." I've kept looking that one up for forty years.

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