If ucn rd ths wots the pt?

Sep 14 2008 by Ken Oxley, Sunday Sun

THERE’S been yet more talk this week of examiners going easy on students who make fundamental spelling errors in exams.

Leading phonetics professor John Wells stirred up a hornet’s nest recently when he suggested text messaging and language used in emails was “the way forward” and that people should be free to use whichever spelling they prefer.

Now his views appear to have gained the support of Ian McNeilly of the National Association for the Teaching of English, who says it is possible to achieve top GCSE grades despite poor spelling.

Examples he gave at a conference this week included pupils ending words with “ink” instead of “ing”, such as “somethink” and confusing “know” with “no” and “their” and “there”.

And some efforts were virtually unrecognisable, such as “gourges” instead of “gorgeous” and “angshuse” for “anxious”. I realise that, so long as we can make sense of a sentence, it shouldn’t really matter too much how a word is spelt.

And I accept that language is a living, breathing thing and that alternative spellings are all part of its evolution.

Even so, I feel uncomfortable about educators taking such a lax approach. I’m not entirely sure why it feels wrong . . . it just does.

I guess I must be a dinosaur.