Spelling success

The Girl Who Spelled Freedom was a 1980s Disney Movie that I’d love to see again. It was about a Cambodian refugee girl who became excellent at spelling English words and got into a spelling bee final in the US, only four years after she started learning English.

Word intrigue

I’d love to see it to see how I, as an adult, would be at spelling the words she was able to spell in the competition. I’m good at spelling. Regularly I get asked to spell words for friends, family, associates. Occasionally I get a spelling wrong. It’s not just a mistype, but the spell check on Microsoft Word informs me that yet again I have spelled intriuge wrong. It should be intrigue.

Did you mean?

In my line of work I see misspelled words everywhere. I understand that people who are not as good at spelling just don’t see the mistakes. But in this day and age we have the opportunity to turn on the spell check or type a word into a search engine to check the correct spelling. Google, for example will ask “Did you mean:” if it thinks you meant to type in a different word or phrase.

Get it right

So why not try and improve your spelling and improve your communications? If learning by rote is not for you and you’re past the spelling bee sell by date, why not rely on other means to make sure words are spelled correctly? Why not make up a list of the words you misspell most and have them to hand when writing that important pitch or email to a potential client.