This morning on GMA there was a 15 second spot on a school zone in Nevada (if I heard correctly) where someone painting “School 15MPH” on the street of a school zone as “Scool 15MPH.” (I have not yet found the picture, if you do, please send the link my way, I’m going to continue looking. At several technology conferences I have attended, some seem to say everything is at our fingertips so we need to teach process over content. At least we still need to learn to spell. As our school works on there/their/they’re and its v. it’s I found a group (TEAL: The Typo Eradication Advancement League) who has a mission to fix the misspellings and typos around the country. I love it. The hotel in Kansas City was not overly receptive when I mentioned their typo on their sign in the parking lot and that was the only time I ever mentioned something like that. (If you would like to see a video clip about TEAL, check here.)
TEAL is posting their adventures to a blog and in their blogroll, they have a list of seven blogs dedicated to spelling and grammar – what great resources and examples of abuses of the English language. My pet peeve is usually hearing people say “oriented” as “orientated.” There just isn’t a second “t.” One of my favorite spelling-related moments in the classroom came a couple of years ago when one student asked, “How do you spell ‘orientated?'” I responded, “You can’t.” A great spelling discussion ensued.
I know this post is a little late (I generally post on Fridays for The Friday Five) but tis week I spent the “Five’s” time on a brochure for an upcoming TG Staff Tech conference we will offer this summer and how appropriate for this post, I spent yesterday fixing a typo on the brochure only to decide there was a grammatical error so I recycled all 75 color copies and will have them reprinted for Tuesday
Happy spelling and happy weekend!
No Time to Sleep 