Some Advantages to Misspelling

Some say it all started when then Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled “potato”. He didn’t actually misspell the word, he incorrectly corrected an elementary chap by suggesting that an “e” should be added on the end. That incident may have brought our lack of spelling efficiency to the forefront of the public eye, but it certainly wasn’t the beginning of the story. Our family took off on many travel adventures during my childhood. Mile upon country mile in our brown Ford LTD station wagon forced me to concoct methods of entertaining myself. Car Bingo got old quick so one of my favorite pastimes was to read the billboards and ad signs along the road with the goal of recognizing misspellings. There were plenty enough to keep me occupied. For example, I pointed out a sign once that said something about cheap “gasolene”. I suspect my parents sometimes grew weary of answering all my questions. Understandably so. Most were trivial and senseless. But in this case, my dad came up with a great answer. Said the wise one, “They do that on purpose so you will notice their sign.” Made sense to me. After all, I do notice a lot of purposeful misspellings even today. Take “Krispy Kreme” for example, where both the words are spelled wrong. Not to be outdone, their rival “Dunkin Donuts” got in on the misspell act long ago. Throw in the chocolate drink “Quik” and food munchies that call themselves “Snaks.” One local restaurant combines both these misspelled words to get my attention. It must work because I go there about once a week. I’m not a spokesperson (can’t say spokesman anymore) for any product but worthy of mention in this column are Ultra Brite and Gleem toothpaste, Infiniti automobiles, Liquid Plumr drain unclogger, Cheez Doodles, and various sorts of Lite diet items. Add those to the “texting by sound” phenomenon and it’s a wonder the younger generation can spell at all anymore. But alas all that misspelling is starting to take its toil. Just ask people who misspell stuff when they’re trying to sell it on Ebay, a modern development that’s here to stay. If you misspell, people don’t see your item when they do a search. Ouch. Some industrious folks go so far as to purposefully misspell an item when they do a search in hopes of finding a bargain. One guy claims he bought for two dollars a box of pocket watch “geers” no one seemed interested in. He spelled “gears” right and reposted it on Ebay and quickly sold them for $200. I never won a spelling bee in elementary school. You could probably tell that by reading this and any other of my columns. What may surprise you is that I finished second quite often. I don’t know for sure but I think maybe “gasoline” got me a couple times. But I’m not too worried about it these days. Spell check is alive and well on my computer and when I butcher the spellings in these columns it is largely on purpose. All this spelling and misspelling has made me hungry. So sometime soon I will head over to the Quik Snak and git me sum taters. Oh, excuse me, Mr. Quayle, I meant to say tatoes.