Inglush, as it was meant to be spoke

One would have thought that by now I’d have learned that if I’m going to spend time going through registrations I’m going to be surprised and disappointed. For those unfamiliar, registration is the process on Tutors International’s web site where would-be applicants enter their basic information (name, address, email, contact numbers etc) and where they upload their CVs and photographs. As part of my Christmas vacation work, when we are relatively quiet with Client Enquiries, I try to sort through all those incomplete registrations – from people who have started, but not completed, the registration process.

When I started in on the list two weeks ago it had more than 2300 items…that’s some 2300 people who thought that they might like to work for us and changed their mind before they’d completed the 15 minute registration process, less a few who, it’s clear, thought they’d finished and then never returned to check…

Among the clangers in the first 700 or so of these records, are those from people with degrees in English, with vainglorious spelling errors:

‘professor’ as proffesor, professer, or proffessor

‘education’ as eduaction, educasian, eduction

‘anthropology’ as anthology, antapology

‘deceased’ as desceest, diseased, diseast

‘literature’ as litterature, litarature, litereture

‘initially’ as inititally, inishly, innitially, initialy

 

I know I’ve asked this question before, but I simply fail to understand how such poor spellers and people who lack attention to detail in their own writing, could be allowed into an English degree, much less let out with one.  Why is it not a basic pre-requisite that in order to write English one should be able to spell it…?

 

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