The ART of SPELLING
   Marilyn vos Savant
  2000 W. W. Norton & Co. NY USA
   ISBN: 0393049035


With Joan Reilly's illustration this lively, comprehensive & useful guide for spellers of all abilities takes a look at what our spelling reveals about our intelligence & personalities.

This book is the result of Parade magazine's “Ask Marilyn” spelling survey, which drew a surprising 43K responses & investigated whether spelling was a measure of brains, education, personality traits or desire.

I was schooled in those Good Old Days when we wrote & re-wrote our writing exercises in pencil & graduated to dip pen & ink, we also recited our times tables each & every day for weeks on end. In our English classes we were taught little ditties on the vital subject of spelling: “i before e except after c except for the exceptions which sound like as as in weight.”

Nowadays my Webslave & I sit side-by-side, tapping away at our keyboards until I get an elbow in my arm & a dejected plea for help. I was taught to spell a word in groups of three letters & after six years, my Webslave is just getting the hang of how I spell words out. He is also still struck dumb when he comes up with something I have no idea.

Marilyn vos Savant reconstitutes our turbulent history in spelling this language we call English, offering us insights about the use & misuse of spell-checkers - remember, computers won't know the difference between wave & waive & sketches some surprising portraits of all kinds of us spellers.

I've not read vos Savant's columns, however, I have read The ART of SPELLING & know that she has a sharp & twisted sense of humor & a distinct stainless-steel wit.

If spelling interests you in the least little bit, do give this book a go - you may very well find it a delight, I did!

Vos Savant echoes my own point of view: “I'm an excellent speller...this doesn't mean that I know how to spell virtually every word. Instead, it means that I virtually never make a spelling mistake. There's a difference. One doesn't make a spelling error unless one doesn't know it. And I nearly always know when I don't know(that is, for sure) how to spell a word correctly. So I looked it up first. This behavior is clearly fastidious. ...this behavior is also what makes an excellent speller.”

More from Marilyn vos Savant: Ask Marilyn; More Marilyn; The World's Most Famous Math Problems: The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem & Other Mathematical Mysteries; “I've Forgotten Everything I Learned in School!”: A Refresher Course to Help You Reclaim Your Education; Of Course I'm for Monogamy: I'm Also for Everlasting Peace & an End to Taxes; The Power of Logical Thinking
(01/21/01)

Rebecca