<splutters> You see this, THIS is exactly why polytechnics should never have been made into Universities

[Twiglett]

fgs

I couldn't even read past the third paragraph

gah !! they'll be allowing them to write in pencil next...thin end of the wedge

ROFL

He's either a lecturer or a professor, surely? Not both!

What a load of bolleaux, if you accept some bad spellings, then you have to accept them all; it's like saying you don't care how anything is spelled.

Grr... it'll be grammatical variants next!

I saw this in The Times this morning and knew there would be a thread on here! Some of his suggestions ae just bizarre e.g. "ignor" - WTF?.

ae are

"judgment" arrrrghhh .. does he think we're American???

So next time I get a speeding fine I will just tell the authorities that it is a form of variant driving??

Sloppy, sloppy and just very misguided thinking....

I shouted "I an NOT American" at my computer at work this morning when I was typing an email in Outlook, and it insisted on spelling "realise" with a z. Even when I changed it back to s, it changed it back to z again!!

I object to his reasoning but it's not just his students who do it - Imperial College, one of the best universities (OK, part of a university) in the world came up with a long list of words that are commonly misspelt by its students not that long ago. And you'd think with the percentage of overseas students there the standard of English would actually be higher.

I have no degree, from either a so-called "true" university or a former polytechnic, but I disagree with him.

Should we ignore minor mathematical errors?

Should we ignore oh I don't know, any number of things?

Judgment and judgement are both valid in English. A judgment in a legal case is always spelt that way, whereas judgement is the normal spelling for all other usages.

that's what I love about Pedants .. there's always someone to out-pedant you

....I was ejected from a Politics degree at Portsmouth Poly in 1987.

This is, I feel, a noteworthy achievement in itself.

...I, too, read the Times article (despite my chequered educational history I am struggling to be middle class. Including Tuscan holidays and force feeding sea bass and olives to the urchins).

....even a Pompey Poly reject like myself can spell opertunity opportunity. Ahem.

He's obviously never had to decipher one of Cod's 'variant spelling' posts

If prefer judgment - think it looks nicer. Not that it's a word I often need to use. (It's also the way my bible (NIV) spells it.)

Eek! I spelt argument with an extra 'e' in a post this morning without thinking! Do you think I can get it deleted?

But why does it actually matter, if a word is recognisable, how it's spelt?

Language has always been a changing and evolving thing, spelling and pronunciation and vocabulary change over the years. Is there any benefit in insisting that it stays artificially static?

It's not the same as a minor mathematical error, which would make the rest of the mathematics it depends on inaccurate. There isn't any a priori reason why language should be static. It's just being pedantic for the sake of it instead of accepting inevitable linguistic change.

A bit like insisting on using quill and paper rather than the internet to communicate.

I have a friend who has an MSc from Cambridge and a DPhil from Oxford - but has a complete mental block over "suprise". She just uses a spellchecker

I think if he was a lecturer in linguistics, rather than criminology, I might be inclined to consider his argument. (I'm all for language as a living entity, majority usage wins out etc...) But how on earth can he have a clue what he is talking about?

He just sounds like a lazy twonk who can't be arsed marking papers properly.
Isn't education all about teaching how to spell things correctly?
What next - it doesn't matter if you think 5 x 6 is 42. It's a 'variant' answer

if matters Fennel ... it really really matters

So, Cornflakegirl, is 'suprise' her mentally-blocked spelling? Lots of people miss the 'r' out of 'surprise', so I bore my children by explaining how it's from the French 'sur prendre'.

And I agree that spelling should be allowed to evolve, like language, otherwise we'd all still be writing 'shewed' and 'the head-ach' like the lovely Jane A. That's why we need an English Academy - so they can decree when a word should be allowed a variant.

couldn't read it all never mind third para

worra lowda bolloks

Education is all about teaching people to think flexibly and creatively. IMO. Knowledge of good spelling and grammar, and mathematical formulae, are just the building blocks for that. Not the outcome.

Language is nothing like maths. It's a social behaviour. That's why it's impossible to get a computer to translate between languages. People have been trying for decades and got nowhere. It doesn't follow rules. There seem to be rules but people constantly subvert them and change them. Maths, in contrast, is eminently computational.