Orthography is a fancy word to indicate things that deal with the written language, usually regarding spelling.

 

Most people aren’t good spellers and will eat fire to avoid showing they can’t spell well.

 

Bad spelling is NOT a problem of intelligence for most people. Correct spelling just doesn’t improve their lives much once they are out of school or have jobs that don’t require exacting detail with language. In my opinion, the ability to identify words in their correct forms is a testament of education, but not necessarily intelligence. But it’s not really a practically important thing to stress about.

 

Since all great ideas start small, I’d like to throw one out there in order to be able to claim in 30 years that I started it. 🙂

Many people fail to use a lot of interesting words in written form that they might say frequently. Mostly, it’s due to the fear that it isn’t being used properly or that it’s spelled like a madman on meth.

 

I’ve always advocated that people just “try” to give it a shot and let the asshats pick on them about it if they so wish. We’re all wormfood anyway, so I can’t see how obsessing over spelling makes us better people. Better essayists and writers, maybe, but not better writers with better ideas. I know a lot of creative, funny people who would be fantastic writers but who wouldn’t dream of using words like “chaotic” or “imaginative.”

 

If you look on the top left key of your keyboard, you will see a “~” (tilde) key there. It originally meant that a word was being abbreviated. In math, the “~” mark means “equivalent to.” It’s also already being used to indicate the idea of “approximately.” If you’re a linux OS fan, you see it a lot, too.

 

Anywho, my point is this:

we should begin to use the “~” mark somewhere in a word where we think we’ve botched the spelling. Thus, “neandurthal~” is the same as “neanderthal.” You could also put it at the beginning or middle of a word. By using it, you are deliberately pointing out that you think the word is not spelled correctly. If you did actually err, you still are getting the word across. Example: “Jim, why don’t you ~sawnter over to the store and buy us some lacksatives~?”

 

Even the word “misspell” is one of the most-misspelled words in the language.