Spell Check and the Demise of the Dictionary

Spell Check and the Demise of the Dictionary
by Oliver Butterick

It just occurred to me that I no longer own a dictionary. At some point during the past year or two, I finally got rid of my tattered paperback copy of the American Heritage Dictionary. It made me wonder how many kids these days will grow up without ever owning one.

You see, I have this pet peeve: it really annoys me when people use words that don’t exist. I know, I know. Comprehension is really what matters when it comes to communication. As long as your point is understood, then spelling and grammar really aren’t that important, right? That’s what I hoped was true during my recent trip to South America. Although I probably sounded like a failing kindergarten student whenever I attempted to speak Spanish, I think I was fairly effective in communicating my thoughts. (Except when I asked a woman if she was “embarazada,” thinking that I was asking if she was embarrassed, when, in fact, I asked if she was pregnant.)

I’m not talking about occasional slips, for I think that everyone makes mistakes once in a while. (By saying that, I’m hoping to free myself from being criticized for the grammatical and spelling errors that find their way into my articles.) I’m talking about people who use words incorrectly, make up words, and abuse grammar on a continual basis. This annoys me because it makes the person sound illiterate, and I usually try not to hang out with illiterates. For example, I’ve had friends who make it the habit of adding suffixes to words in an attempt to sound more intelligent: “analyzation” instead of “analysis,” and I have another friend who adds a preposition to the end of every question: “Where are you going to?” and “Where are my keys at?”

The problem is that I actually learned grammar. During my painful eighth grade year as a Catholic Schoolboy, Mrs. LeDoux drilled grammar into my head by making me diagram sentences. At some point, the light turned on, and I understood that there actually was logic to the English language. Every word serves a purpose and must adhere to certain rules. I do realize that spoken American English does not always strictly follow the rules. I would never ask someone, “With whom are you going to the rave this evening?” Unlike this sentence, however, the questions in the above paragraph require no preposition. “Where are you going?” and “Where are my keys?” work just fine.

I realized that I didn’t own a dictionary when, this morning, I reflected on the deterioration of my vocabulary. I’ve spent the past eight years working in card rooms throughout California, the first seven of which were spent playing games with mostly uneducated, non-native speakers of English. Being the chameleon that I am, I adjusted to my environment and began to speak broken English. How glad I am that Mrs. LeDoux did not have to witness that atrocity.

This reflection led me to think of ways to improve my vocabulary. Maybe I’ll buy one of those “Word-A-Day” calendars for 2005 and start using words that no one really uses. I used to know a girl like that. Heather and I went to school together from late in elementary school through high school. Heather, however, did not have the “Word-A-Day” calendar; she went straight to the source and read the dictionary. She read the entire freaking dictionary. Imagine how ostracized an adolescent would be today is she did such a thing! (Of course, she’d first have to commit the faux pas of actually owning a dictionary.) Well, I guess that times haven’t changed much, as Heather was quite the long shot for Homecoming Queen. Someone who reads the dictionary cover to cover surely has got to be lacking something in the “social skills” department, and this was certainly the case for Heather.

(Don’t get me wrong—when it comes to success as an adult, social skills are far more important than using correct grammar or big words. If you need an example, just think of any rich oilman from Texas who sounds like he’s illiterate, yet has half of America wrapped around his finger. Uh...like JR Ewing on Dallas in the 80’s...yeah, that’s the person I was thinking about. (Or, rather, “about whom I was thinking”.) (Whoops! Parentheses within parentheses—that’s got to be a problem as well.))

In the end, I’m not quite sure who is to blame for America becoming so dumb. Perhaps it’s the teachers. Most of them stumbled upon that profession as a process of elimination. They couldn’t succeed at anything else, so, hey—why not teach??? As the saying goes, “Those who can’t, teach.” Or maybe it’s not the teachers’ fault. Maybe the government should be blamed for not paying teachers more, and thus failing to attract truly competent people to the profession. Blaming the government is so passé, though. And we certainly can't blame the parents. How can we expect them to remember something they learned 20 some odd years ago, especially when it never gets used? All that's left is big business, so I guess we should blame Microsoft, since they invented Spell Check. They get blamed for everything else, so why not this as well?

Oliver can be reached at oliver@babblog.com.