SPELLING


The English language is notorious for its inconsistent spelling. The same letters do not always sound the same. Often cited are the letters ough:

• tough = tuff
• cough = coff
• though = tho
• thought = thawt

independence or independance
acquaintance or acquaintence
correspondence or correspondance
resemblance or resemblence

1. Whenever you have the slightest doubt about a word's spelling, look it up in a good dictionary.

2. Don't try to tackle the whole spelling problem all at once. Every writer has a certain few words, usually fewer than fifty, that cause the most trouble and that come up constantly because they are related to the subjects the writer writes about. Keep a list of these words and concentrate on memorizing them a few at a time-say five a week. Most people cannot memorize fifty words at once but can memorize five at a time. In ten weeks, you will have internalized some of the fifty original words. Because you use them frequently, your number of spelling errors will decrease, thus allowing you to concentrate even more heavily on the few that remain.

SUMMARY

Effective writing uses clear, concise, coherent, and correct language. While striving for such language at all times, the writer actually concentrates on these qualities when revising and editing.
Language includes both form and content-what is said and how it is put. Effective revision and editing change not only the form of the document, but its very substance as well. Even the editing processes discussed in this chapter, such as fixing a spelling error or a grammatical mistake, often include not just window dressing, but substantive changes as well. The writer's ability to monitor and rewrite the language of initial drafts, to come up with the best possible language, is crucial to the success of the final version. All too often an excellent document has been ignored because of problems with correctness that should have been repaired before the document was ever submitted.

E-mail Greg Larkin at Gregory.Larkin@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-4911

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