I'm Only the Trombone Player

On Spelling, on Grammer, on Commas and ellipsis'...

As I pointed out elsewhere I am one of the world's wurst (sic) spellers. So much so that as my days in High School dwindled to a close, my favorite English (now "Language Arts") teacher, Mrs. Foley, gave me a special gift to mark my graduation. A Webster's Pocket Dictionary, which she admonished in a not on the fly leaf, "should never leave my side". That dictionary accompanied me through four years of undergrad school, two years of post grad and even made it to my desk at work. Until finally, tape upon tape I was forced to purchase a replacement, not before I removed and saved Mrs. Foley's note reminding me to always have it handy.

There have been many theories advanced over the years as to WHY I am a poor speller, some of them by academics and others by good old plain simple friends.

First, Mrs. Foleys ~ During elementary school I was placed in a special non-remedial reading program, Speed Reading was all the rage and schools jumped on that band wagon. Basically students were taught to read only the text needed to gain insight, skipping words and not really seeing what they read. Fortunately, or not I excelled at it. So unlike other students I never really had time to learn spellings, recognizing patterns rather then words. For example whether you write it ceiling or ceiling I see the part of the house you hope stays over your head. She based her theory on the fact that given something to proof read, I could Identify misspellings but still couldn't provide the correct spelling.

Next, my own theory, ~ Spelling, like many other subjects was taught by what I call "Brute Force Rote Learning". I hated rote learning, whether it was times tables, cursive writing or even the scales I needed to learn as a musician, I hated the repetitive nature by which they were taught. So spelling at least for me might have been a victim of me being bored with, "write out this weeks spelling words ten times each".

The last? This one was put forward by a college Education Professor. The whole left brain, right brain thing. Because as a musician my "creative side" is dominant, there are times when my creative side outraces my analytical side. In short it's a race to get things down on paper, spelling is the least of the considerations. This might hold more water with me if I were Mozart and not just a journeymen trombonist.

Bottom line? my Dictionary stays at my side, Still! I don't trust spell checks or auto-corrects and I do quite a bit of proof reading. Yet, that occasional misspelling still sneaks past. So if you see one, drop me a note, I will be very thankful!