{"id":74825,"date":"2014-08-01T13:22:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T17:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74825"},"modified":"2014-08-01T14:01:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T18:01:40","slug":"the-thin-red-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/the-thin-red-line\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thin Red Line"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_74828\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/screen-shot-2014-08-01-at-1.18.57-pm.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-74828\" class=\"wp-image-74828 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/screen-shot-2014-08-01-at-1.18.57-pm.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-08-01 at 1.18.57 PM\" width=\"600\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/screen-shot-2014-08-01-at-1.18.57-pm.png 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/screen-shot-2014-08-01-at-1.18.57-pm-300x115.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-74828\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wrong.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>For many years, I had trouble spelling the word <em>Wednesday<\/em>. I remember writing out the days of the week in third grade and wrestling with the <em>e<\/em>\u2019s: Wedenesday. Wedneseday. Wendsday. After all, were these spellings any less arbitrary than the correct one?<\/p>\n<p>Even those of us who don\u2019t think of ourselves as bad spellers have certain bugbears. Without the damning reminders of spell-check, I would still screw up <em>interlocutor<\/em> (I misspelled it, twice, while typing this), <em>resistance<\/em>, and <em>accommodate<\/em>. I probably shouldn\u2019t beat myself up over the last; it\u2019s number one on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxforddictionaries.com\/us\/words\/common-misspellings\" target=\"_blank\">OxfordDictionary.com\u2019s list of common misspellings<\/a>. (Of course, <em>which<\/em> is on it, too.)<\/p>\n<p>My mother strongly recalls an elementary-school spelling test in the late fifties. <em>Committee<\/em> was one of the words the class was told to spell. \u201cI see three sets of twins on this committee,\u201d hinted the teacher broadly. But my mom remembers the panic the hint induced; what did it mean? She managed to misspell it\u2014but to this day, she remembers the incident and has never made the mistake again.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it takes trauma for a lesson to sink in. Sometimes\u2014see <em>necessary<\/em>, one of the few things I retained from middle-school Latin\u2014we need to self-correct, remembering that this is a word that gives us regular trouble, and diligently apply\u00a0a hard-won mnemonic. What interests me, though, are those words that we always get wrong, no matter how many times we see that red spell-check line, and look up the proper spelling, and castigate ourselves for the error.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like a mental block. Or, maybe, an increasing reliance on technology; after all, a part of our brains knows we don\u2019t really need to retain the knowledge. Maybe it\u2019s a subconscious resistance (I just misspelled that, by the way\u2014think of it with a French accent!) to the arbitrary strictures of language, and of Western society generally. (In this scenario, we are all storming a tiny, mental ivory tower\u2014it is sort of like the Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise, but full of really uptight elves.) Perhaps it\u2019s a necessary means of preserving space in our memory cortex, or whatever. Or maybe we just like the reminder that, like children, we are always still learning. Or not learning, as the case may be. Wedenesday. Wedneseday. Wendsday. Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For many years, I had trouble spelling the word Wednesday. I remember writing out the days of the week in third grade and wrestling with the e\u2019s: Wedenesday. Wedneseday. Wendsday. After all, were these spellings any less arbitrary than the correct one? Even those of us who don\u2019t think of ourselves as bad spellers have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[14827,14823,14826,14824,14825,14820,14819,14821,14822],"class_list":["post-74825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-elementary-school","tag-errors","tag-learning","tag-mistakes","tag-mnemonic-devices","tag-spell-check","tag-spelling","tag-spelling-bees","tag-wednesday"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Words Do You Commonly Misspell?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on \u201cWednesday\u201d and the thin red line.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/the-thin-red-line\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Thin Red Line by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 1, 2014 \u2013 For many years, I had trouble spelling the word Wednesday. 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