I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to use my blog as a soap box, or a place to vent about all the admittedly neurotic things that make me crazy. (Also prefacing this with a disclaimer: I am easily annoyed by dumb things and not as easily annoyed by things that should be more annoying.) But here it is: I just can't stand how misspelled words have become a completely accepted in our culture. I realize that part of this stems from the technological revolution, where texts, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. contain acronyms like LOL, or BTW, etc. This is different though. I'm talking about blatant misspellings of an entire word, often the entire name of a company or a brand name because it's "cool" or will somehow sell more product. I don't get it, and I'm definitely not going to jump on board with the idea. (Okay, I suppose I understand why this might be done from an advertising standpoint...but I still think it's a dumb idea. If you have a good product, you have a good product. You could have a good product AND also be modeling correct use of the English language...)
Let me provide a few of the myriad examples that are out there. The water bottles that the girls and I drink from daily are made by a company called Kleen Kanteen. Were I not so tuned into this particular issue, my children would grow up thinking "clean" is spelled "kleen." It most certainly is NOT. And then there are the numerous other commonly misspelled words we take for granted every day: "quick" spelled "kwik" (See, even my blog puts a red underline under it because it's spelled WRONG!) Then there's Reddi-Whip (Ready? Reddi? What are they really trying to say? If the company was started by Mr. Reddi, fine. But if they mean that the whip will be "ready" when I want it, and I don't need to whip it up myself, why can't they just use the correct word?) Chick Fil-A. Really? Not even going to discuss that one.
Worst of all are gross misspellings on items marketed specifically to children. Huge toy companies whose very names are misspelled. WHAT?? Playskool for instance. (Clearly their founder missed a couple days of it, because if he/she hadn't, he/she would know how to spell SCHOOL.) And Kool-Aid. I can't abide this trend/marketing scheme/whatever it is. As a society, we are already in grave danger of killing traditional literacy as we know it. (See note about technological revolution above.) So much of our beautiful language has become denigrated to three letter abbreviations that fit on a small screen. But I find this particular issue, the misspelling one, an almost worse offender. It is so pervasive, and transcends the technological sphere. It's everywhere! The more we dumb down the language, the more dumbed down we will become as a whole society.
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| I'd rather believe in proper spelling! |
I know it doesn't seem like a huge deal. Perhaps I'm making mountains out of molehills. But darn it if there aren't just too many misspelled molehills out there, and it seems to me they are starting to add up to at least a
little mountain. I'm also willing to admit that as a homeschooler maybe I take the issue even more to heart. I am working so hard to teach the girls to read, to know a wrongly spelled word when they see it, and it just tans my hide to be driving down the highway, and there on some gigantic billboard along the side of the road is a advertisement for the Kwik-Mart. Usually Caeley is pretty good at spotting the mistakes, and often asks why the words are not spelled correctly. Good question! I feel like answering, "To advertise how stupid they are!" Do they think they will make more money? Well, not in my case. My first thought was not, "Hey, let's stop there to get some fried pork rinds!" My first thought was, "Someone needs to learn how to spell! Kwikly!"
