The Importance of an “i” in Spelling

Many of us take our language for granted. We speak it, we write and sometimes we type it, all as a matter of every day living. I doubt that I think about how to spell a word even once a week, it’s all a pattern of previously memorized letters that I use automatically.

However, there are days, when it is advisable to take your brain off autopilot.

This week I was teaching my students about:
www.dictionary.com

It’s a great on-line dictionary that makes it easy to find definitions of words and it also has a thesaurus which helps us find words with similar meanings (synonyms) and opposite meanings (antonyms).

Our group was a bit sluggish, so I asked the students to pick a word to define. No one answered. So I encouraged them—I firmly believe that people should use words that are meaningful to their lives.

One student answered with a question about the different sects of Muslims that she had heard about in the news. I told her that she would probably get a better idea from www.wikipedia.org (an online encyclopedia), but sure, since no one else had any ideas, let’s all type it into the definition box.

How do you spell it?

Instead of thinking about it, I and everyone in the class typed in the word exactly as she spelled it.

s, h, i, t, e.

It only faintly occurred to me that this spelling didn’t look quite right.

We pressed our enter keys and got the definition almost immediately.
shite, noun, obscene terms for feces [syn: crap]

The word we wanted was Shi’ite.
Shi ite also Shi’ite, noun, A member of the branch of Islam that regards Ali and his descendants as the legitimate successors to Muhammad and rejects the first three caliphs.

The lesson to be learned (once we had all stopped laughing) is that missing an “i” can turn a beautifully crafted piece into a pile of “you know what,” if you aren’t careful about your spelling.

Thanks for sharing a few minutes with me.
Ellen

Ellen Wass Beckerman
Writer/Photographer/Graphic Designer
Photography portfolio: www.istockphoto.com/zmacgal
www.gardentextures.com