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March 07, 2006
Spelling Still
A couple days ago I mentioned the art and science of spelling. It must be my week for paying attention to it because I had another opportunity to discover my spelling abilities, or lack of them, yesterday.
It was a busy, crazy day, but I was scheduled to be the Table Topics person at Toastmasters. Now the Table Topics person needs to be prepared for two things. He, or in this case she, needs to have some topics for people to talk about and they need the word of the day. Our theme was to the the crazy weather, so I had several topics in mind for people to talk to, but I had yet to look up a word.
The first word that popped into my head for a crazy weather day was precipitation. Speakers could then find a way to weave the word into their talk. The wordmaster is supposed to not only provide a word, but its pronunciation, spelling, and definition. Well, you can do those things only after you find the word in the dictionary.
I ran out to our front office to check. I couldn't find the word in the first dictionary. It's a smaller dictionary than the great big Webster's we have. Maybe it wasn't in there, only in the back of my head I couldn't imagine that. I tried Webster's. Couldn't find it, which was my first clue.
"Denise," I said to one of our first desk folks, "How do you spell precipitation?"
"Percipitation," she said.
"That's the way I'm spelling it, but it's not here," I said. Then as I wrote the word in my head and said it again, I realized I was spelling it wrong. "Shoot, it's pre. No wonder I can't find it."
"That's what dictionaries are for," said Denise as I was mumbling under my breath about not being able to spell. She's right. Dictionaries are for spelling and pronunciation and definitions, but after all those spelling tests I took in school, I generally expect to be able to spell most words without having to look them up.
Guess there are a few I still need to check on. Think it will precipitate the rest of the week? Looks like rain to me.
Posted by Dr Joni at March 7, 2006 06:46 AM