From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!mmp Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: Rational spelling - (nf) Article-I.D.: harpo.895 Posted: Mon Jul 26 11:15:40 1982 Received: Thu Jul 29 07:07:35 1982 #R:watmath:-308500:harpo:17900002:000:1076 harpo!mmp Jul 26 10:59:00 1982 Somehow when I try to read an article about rational spelling written by someone who won't spell "of" correctly, I can't seem to take it seriously. It's extremely difficult to read something that's supposed to be in English (American?) when one of the most frequently used words is spelled incorrectly. I find that the main problem with "ov" is that it doesn't look at all like "of". It looks a lot more like "on" or "or", and neither word fits into the context. Then I have to consciously read the sentence again, figure out that "ov" really means "of", and go on from there. When I read, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to individual letters. Instead, I often see a word as a whole, a sort of picture. Spelling for me is more a matter of whether a word looks right than anything else. Anyway, "rational" spelling doesn't seem too rational to me. It's amazing how much a couple of words spelled "rationally" instead of correctly will slow down my reading comprehension. Michelle Peetz BTL Whippany P.S. Doesn't "uv" make more sense than "ov" anyway?