Pedantic

I am a spelling Nazi.  I hate, loathe and abominate bad spelling, especially on signs in public places.  To everyone's horror I bail up shop managers and assistants to point out their terrible errors.  Years ago when I lived in Torrensville we used to frequent the Pizza Hut at Brooklyn Park.  Below the counter there was a sign saying Dinning Room.  That offended me so I took great pains to tell the young man exactly what was wrong with the sign.  That according to me was the end of it, however, when we returned three weeks later the sign was still there.  Years ago I was much less mellow than I am today, so I asked to see the manager and another poor little boy appeared.  I then went on to harangue him about the sign and finished by telling him if it was still on the wall when next we visited I personally would rip it off down and throw it into the bin.  My family were horrified about my behaviour and sort of shrank away from me.  Eventually Pizza Hut  must have changed the sign, not so much that it was spelled wrong but possibly because they feared me physically injuring the poor manager. 

I did the same thing at Port Adelaide at a little cafe where English was obviously the owner's second language.  My friend realized what was going to happen so she quickly got herself outside and away from the crazy spelling person and her unsuspecting victim.  I don't think the little shop assistant even knew what I was talking about and that was probably a mercy.

My latest effort was to complain about the sign at Gloria Jeans.  I don't think I was the only one that complained because about two years after my orignal complaint they changed all the signs in all the Gloria Jean's across the country.  Their spelling mistake was to advertise course ground coffee.  Even if they had used spell check it would not have worked because obviously course is a word.  Not the right word but still a viable word.  I pointed out to the lady that the word that they actually wanted was coarse.  I think the reason it took so long to fix it was that Gloria Jean's had to save their pennies for the massive Australia wide reprint. 

My thought is that if you are going to put up a sign to be read by the general public ask someone who can actually spell to check your sign.  I am always available and would only charge a nominal fee. 

Unfortunately I have caused my daughter to be as big or a bigger pendant than I.  I think she is now not so likely to correct people than I have always been, however, it does engender the same irritation.  It has brought us closer together because we can spend ages ranting and raving about people's illiteracy.  We know we cannot fix it but we can certainly gripe about it.

It is frightening that there are generations of  young people who rely on the spell check application on their trusty computers, because they do not realize that computers are fallible and that they do not know if a word is being used in the right context.

I do not always spell words correctly, but of course I have the child of my loins to correct me.  If I know I am not sure about spelling I use a trusty thing that is mostly ignored by young ones; my old dictionary.  The child of my loins informs me that you can check spelling somewhere on the computer, however, I am not convinced that even in a computer dictionary the spelling is correct.  Give me my old Oxford speller any time because I am much happier with the results.

If you find anything incorrectly spelled in this piece please feel free to correct me.  I am quite happy to edit my printed work.