Pickles by Brian Crane for September 02, 2013

Earl’s way is usually not the right way Nelson.

I remember some “One Big Happy” like that, but it was between the father and son doing the son’s spelling homework. Sad thing is I forgot what the word was.

Many of us born before 1946 learned "sight reading " instead of phonics in school. Made us prodigious readers but lousy spellers. To this day, I am ashamed to say, I spell much better in other languages, than I do in English, Thank God for spell checker !

Me, too!

Earl does have a point!

He’s got you there Nelson.

I spell squirrel: H-A-M-M-Y!

@simpsonfan2, I’ve always wondered how to look up a word if you don’t know how it’s spelled (i.e., where to find it in the list).

How do you spell Earl, Opal?

Back to new episodes after 4 weeks of reruns.

Nawt myne!

“It’s a poor mind that can only find one right way to spell a word,” Confederate General

My name is Earl and I am not smarter than a fifth grader.

My spelling aloud is much, much worse than that. I can spell fine writing/typing (not counting typos), but aloud my brain gets all confused.

It’s spelled F-i-l-e-t M-i-g-n-o-n in the far east menus.

Very few people listen to the specifics of questions. Kudos to Earl. Opal, you need to work on that.

Boy, I am glad I don’t play Scrabble with Earl. It would be non-stop arguments on whether or not the word he wants to use is acceptable.

T_Lexi: Because studies showed that adults tended to see words as distinct units rather than groups of phonemes, it was decided that children should be taught to read the same way. This effectively reduced English from one squiggle equals one phoneme to one squiggle equals one word – the same as in Chinese ideograms or Kanji. This was combined with a rule that children’s books should not have more than 500 words in the whole book – a requirement that only Ted Geisel could meet and still be interesting. Both spelling ability and interest in reading plummeted.

I think I’m a better speller because I read a lot. If a word is spelled incorrectly, I’ll recognize that it doesn’t look right and I’ll know how it should be spelled to “look right”.

@simpsonfan2, when my sons were growing up, I’d tell them to look it up. Their response was they didn’t know how to spell it. I told them to sound it out and they’d find it. They all know how to spell.

Oh Earl always has to be right! Don’t argue with him, Opal.

LOL xxx

Texting and tweeting has effectively killed grammar and spelling in the U.S. I find myself guilty, all too often, in the interest of brevity, of taking linguistic short cuts.

I’ve noticed that genetics seems to play a large role in spelling; also “congenital” figures in here. I confess that I’ve always been a good speller (since learning to read in the first grade). Even a word like “Schenectady” comes easily, because I’ve seen it and the spelling sinks in automatically. My first daughter was an ok speller (wound up as a psychiatrist), but the second’s spelling was phenomenal. Of her four children, the first two read at age three and have always been great spellers. The third read at five, but her spelling would have us ROFL. I was afraid that the last one would have to take remedial reading, but she appeared to be at the head of the pack in the first grade, and actually read with more expressiveness than the others. Her spelling, though, leaves one wide-eyed with wonder, and not in a good way.

When I asked my mom what a word meant she’d say “look it up.” Eventually I’d figure out how to spell it. Consequently I am a very good speller, voracious reader with a very good vocabulary. A birthday gift when I was 8 was my own dictionary. I was born in 1952 and we always had spelling tests, vocabulary tests, and lists of root words to be able to figure out what a word meant. Do they do that anymore?