"Bad spellers of the world, untie!"

I once saw a t-shirt with that on it, and I’m still kicking myself for not buying it. I’m a classic bad speller.

I spent 20 minutes Friday agonizing over the spelling of the word “terrific.” One ‘r’ and two ‘fs,’ two ‘rs’ and one ‘f,’ two of each, one of each? The possibilities were endless.

As far as I can tell, the English language is filled with tons of tricky words. The list of the 100 most frequently misspelled words is filled with words that give me trouble, like guarantee, medieval and separate. Funnily enough, the word misspell is included on the list.

But right now, there is a growing movement to make the spellings of words match up with their pronunciations. The American Literacy Council, formed in 1876, spearheads the initiative. Its members write letters to dictionary editors calling for simpler spellings and organize educational conferences. You can read their arguments for phonetic spelling and a phonetic spelling version of the Gettysburg Address here.

Most recently, the council gathered at the National Spelling Bee dressed in bee costumes and wielding signs saying “I’m thru with through.”

They’re yet to have any success since their founding more than 100 years ago. They came close in 1906, when President Theodore Roosevelt changed the spelling of 300 words. After looking at the list, it seems Roosevelt attempted to abolish the “ed” at the ends of verbs in the past tense and replaced it with a single “t” (i.e kissed became kist). He also changed although to altho and phoenix to phenix.

Although I’m a self-proclaimed bad speller, I don’t like the idea of shifting to phonetic spelling. Why? There are only a few extremely difficult words in the English language and it seems ridiculous to revamp the whole language for a few words.

So I’ll continue to slog through life with my bad spelling. I’ll rely on my spell-check and dictionary.

What about you? Do you want to spell funetically (is that phonetic) or leave things the way they are?