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?