I will be the first to admit that I am a horrid
speller. Over the years, the various
forms of AutoCorrect have made it even worse.
They offer up the correct spelling, I recognize it as being correct, select
it, and move on without taking the time to learn the proper spelling.
The word “necessary” is the one exception. For some reason I’m so off base that it
doesn’t even suggest any sort of replacement.
I suspect at that point my computer is rolling its eyes at me in
disgust. “Really, Boyd? How many times have we done this word?”
By now it has become some sort of permanent
mental block. It certainly isn’t a
challenging word, but I never get it correct the first five times out of the
gate.
There are occasions where I’ll use some form of a dictionary
to verify my spelling or make certain I’m using the word correctly. I mean…it’s a dictionary. That grand tome of knowledge we’ve been
directed to since we were children. It
could be that cumbersome and heavy hardcover version in the bowels of the library
or any number of online versions – they’re all the same, right?
It wasn’t until this past election cycle that I began dive into
what makes up the contents of a dictionary.
On any given day up until November 8th of last year, my
Facebook feed was flooded with “news” regarding nearly every candidate and
political party in the general election.
I like to think of myself as discerning and verified the source of each
of the stories. More often than not,
they were fake. Still, they would be
shared and re-shared to such a degree they would feel real.
Along the same lines, maybe I want to use the word ‘tacitly’
in a project I’ve been working on. A
quick search in Google brings up 516,000 results and they kick off with…
…but where is it
getting that information? Who decided
that was accurate? I had a general idea
of what the word meant and how I wished to use it. This seemed to confirm my thinking. But what if it had been a completely new word
to me? I would have searched, seen that
definition, and been off and running whether it had been entirely correct or
not. Not terribly different from those
who buy into the fake news rolling by on Facebook.
So who decides on the content and are there cases where they
don’t agree? Absolutely. Back in the early 1960s, Webster’s Third was
published. The edition raised eyebrows
because of liberties it took in definitions and included words. James Parton, who at the time was a co-owner
of American Heritage magazine, even attempted to purchase the G. and C. Merriam
Company (publisher of Webster’s Third) so he could undo their changes and revert
everything back to what had been a standard up to that point. When that failed, he had American Heritage
Dictionary published. Part of that
process included the creation of a Usage Panel – a panel that lives on to this day and features writers, speakers, humorists, editors, and up until his death last
year, even a Supreme Court Justice.
You can find the complete list of current Usage Panel members here.
The more research I have done, the more fascinated I have
become. Part of being an excellent
craftsman is understanding your tools.
As a writer, words are my tools.
I appreciate them more now than ever before.
What are your thoughts on spelling, dictionaries, or the
Usage Panel? Let me know in the comments
section below.
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