This week a university lecturer, Ken Smith, suggested that spelling “mistakes” should be accepted as variants. This has upset Ideas of Civilisation and Colin Campbell among others.

I side with Ken Smith on this occasion though. I hate spelling mistakes and love to point them out. Only yesterday I saw a greengrocers’ apostrophe and instinctively growled. But that is only because I am a cheeky wee pedant. Deep down, I know that the rules of the English language are strange and, ultimately, pointless.

What is the purpose of language? I would say language is what allows people to communicate with each other. Accordingly, rules should develop naturally, and as long as the two parties communicating understand each other all is well. However, for grammar fascists, language rules are just an opportunity to crack the whip.

It is worth remembering that a strict one-size-fits-all suite of language rules is a very modern concept. Standardised spellings only came in when some smart fellow decided to become the first lexicographer and hoodwink people into believing his services were vital.

William Shakespeare did not even have a standardised spelling for his own name. Was he wrong? If we follow the joke that the easiest mark in an exam is for spelling your name correctly, it looks like Shakespeare himself would have failed his English GCSE.

Now, hopefully you have noticed that I like to take care over my spelling and suchlike. But this is a personal choice that I took because I believe that adhering to these rules allows me to reach the widest audience possible. That, and it means I don’t get bombarded by complaints from snobs.

If someone else is content to spell things incorrectly but can still convey their message to its intended recipient then that is their personal choice. There is nothing wrong with people deciding how they can speak and write for themselves.

Language has always evolved naturally, and I see no reason why that should stop now. The purpose of a dictionary is to record language as it is written, not to tell people how to write it. If different people spell things in different ways, then that is just part of life’s rich tapestry.

After all, we tolerate and even celebrate — and rightly so — variations in pronunciation in the English language. Only the snobbiest of snobs would demand that everyone speaks RP. In this age where regional accents are celebrated, we usually find we have no trouble understanding people. So why should people also be expected to write in the same bland, standardised, colourless RP all the time?

What gets me is the sheer snobbery of some people who insist on “correct” spellings. Who is to say that you are right and they are wrong? Closing your ears and stomping your feet complaining about how thick the other person is does not get anyone anywhere. Is there not room for some give and take, just as there is when having a conversation with people who have a different accent?

Ideas of Civilisation attempted to show how ludicrous Ken Smith’s suggestion is by filling his post with a myriad of misspellings. Of course, were Ken Smith’s idea to take hold and language was allowed to evolve naturally, we almost certainly would not face a wholesale dumping of the dictionary, with standards completely replaced by arbitrariness. Instead, new standards would emerge while the most common misspellings would be tolerated.

Txt spk is the perfect example. Snobs may turn their nose up at it, but there is no denying that this development which emerged naturally has had an important influence in simplifying the language and removing barriers to communication. In fact, it is an ingenious solution to the problem we all face, stuck with the QWERTY system which was originally designed to slow typists down. What is wrong with people using their initiative to speed things up again?

Then there is the text message itself, where brevity is key. Messages are limited to 160 characters which means you have to keep it short if you want to avoid being charged double or even triple your normal rate. The new standard of abbreviations is a clever and natural way to evade this restriction.

That is not to mention instant messaging, where speed is as important as clarity. When you are having a fast-paced IM conversation, it is only sensible to take the odd short cut. It should be no surprise that in an age where we rely more heavily than ever on inefficient keyboards and restrictive technologies that new standards should emerge.

Moreover, what is wrong with “embarassing”, “beleive” or “pleasent”? Or even the odd “there” instead of “their” or vice-versa? You would still know exactly what I meant were I to use those spellings. Any exam marker with two brain cells to rub together would know that as well. If he were to mark down someone for putting one ‘r’ instead of two even though the meaning is still perfectly clear, then that would make him a petulant, authoritarian shit.

When Nicol Stephen emerged as a front-runner to become the Scottish Lib Dem leader after Jim Wallace stood down, I joked (two years ago, blimey!) that it might raise awareness of how to spell my name, Stephen. Common variations include: Steven, Stephens, Stevens, Stephenson and Stevenson. None of which, you might notice, are correct.

Worse still, because my first name is Duncan, I get plenty of people who think my name is Stephen Duncan. Might as well just call me Buttsecks and be done with it.

Unfortunately, even if you are the leader of a major political party in Scotland, still many people can’t get your name right. *sigh*

Via SNP Tactical Voting.

I actually burst out laughing while I read this week’s edition of the Student newspaper. It contains a misfiring dig at the Students’ Association-funded rival publication, Hype.

Last week, the EUSA controlled publication Hype printed an article which implied a link between the University’s Islamic Society and Palestinian terrorism, based on information on Wikipedia. The same issue of the magazine features an article — written by a staff member — including the staggering misspelling of “staggered by” as “staggerd y”. This is far from an isolated incident.

…Considering the resources available, is it too much to expect the appearance of grand ideas such as spelling, grammar and the journalistic awareness not to use Wikipedia as a primary source?

This is actually part of the first piece in the relatively new leader section, which resembles The Guardian’s leader section in every conceivable way, from the design through to the regular “In praise of…” column.

A couple of weeks ago, Student was published as a special one-off “broadsheet” edition in celebration of the newspaper’s 119^th anniversary (?!). Except that it wasn’t a broadsheet at all. It was just the same old tabloid format, but with the front page rotated ninety degrees and spilling over onto the back page. The result was just confusion, along with confirmation that the paper has ideas way above its station. (Who else thinks it was just down to somebody fancying the idea of putting the fact that they have edited a broadsheet on their CV?)

In fairness, Student has improved a lot since it started to take itself more seriously this year. Unfortunately, it is now also po-faced and boring. Despite the fact that it feels like a better paper, I probably actually read less of it. And those spelling and grammar errors are still there in full force. And that takes them straight to the top of the hypocrisy league tables, given today’s attack on Hype.

Student is notorious for its howlingly obvious spelling and grammar errors. Maybe I should hunt down the edition from a few weeks ago that talked about the “gravitas” of a situation. I can’t remember what situation it was, but I clearly thought the gravitas [sic] of this basic English error was more important because that’s the only thing I can remember about it.

I am not a fan of Hype at all. Infact, I never pick it up. There is no escaping the fact that Hype is essentially nothing more than a EUSA propaganda rag. But today’s Student article criticising Hype’s spelling errors is just the pot calling the kettle black while gloriously dipping itself in a vat of black paint.

The Firefox 2 feature that seems to have got people most excited is the fact that each individual tab now has its own X button.

But come on. Why did you even use the X button anyway. Did you not realise that middle clicking on a tab closes it?

Infact, middle clicking is probably one of the greatest things about Firefox, yet nobody seems to know anything about it. Middle clicking on a link makes it open in a new tab. That’s right. Those webmasters forcing links to open in a new window or in the same tab and suck it. I have control over where my links open.

It’s so great, yet nobody else seems to do it. It’s not very well-known. I think I discovered it by accident. But I thought it was so great that I now click just about every link with the scroll wheel, even if I’m not bothered about keeping the current tab open. You know why? Because I can easily close the tab by middle clicking on it.

See how great this is? I think this is the real reason why I don’t use IE. My beloved middle clicking would be gone.

Do I get too excited about a mouse button?

Update: One thing that sucks about Firefox 2 is the spell checker. Colour is wrong. Labour is wrong. Realise is wrong. Defense is right. What sort of fucked up dictionary are these people using?! Amusingly, also wrong are ‘img’ ’src’ and ‘jpg’. Doh! Wait a minute. ‘Doh’ is aswell! And so is aswell! I should just switch this spell checker off, shouldn’t I?

Update again: By the way, I love the fact that I can set it to subscribe to RSS feeds using Google Reader (or any other feed reader I want). Nice!

Update: Found out, via Gordon McLean, how to get rid of that Go button. I had been wondering about that! Now, does anybody know how to get rid of the search go button (with the magnifying glass)?