[lbo-talk] Writing semiliterate English (advice)

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Jul 11 07:44:42 PDT 2008


On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, sawicky at verizon.net wrote:


> I would forego the misspelling, since it conveys nothing of importance
> to an English reader.

What it conveys is that this is a man who is a writing a book who has maybe a 2nd grade education. And there are people like this in America. I remember in the 1970s running into a cowboy out west who was a pillar of his community -- he ran a large ranch business when I met him, and was way smarter than me about almost everything that wasn't in books when I was 17. But when I read one of his hand written memos, I was stunned. His spelling was that of a 2nd grader. For an intellectual who gets most of his knowledge through books it's a real shock to realize just how smart and capable people can be who don't read at all. That's what the misspelling gets across.

Michael



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