journal features

spelling

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2012.06.28

Kenny's abilities with words and numbers are really taking off. He can now add any two values to a sum (as long as they're single digits) and he can spell some words if you ask him. The first of these was "Papa", I'm not sure how many others he knows.

He really seems to enjoy it. I'm putting him in front of a "word processing" package on an old beater laptop to encourage him. He can faithfully copy any word you type in, and seems to be getting the hang of lower-case letters.

P.S. Any time I think of our spelling system, I despair at this unreformed, conflict-ridden mess. Can't we start with some low-hanging fruit such as better distinguishing 1 from I and l?

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot