Thursday, February 26, 2009

Noah Webster on Spelling

"Spelling is the foundation of reading and the greatest ornament of writing."

-Noah Webster

5 comments:

Gina said...

Hey, Laura,

Where'd you get the Webster quotation? He was born in 1558 -- did he really say this when he was 15?

Laura Payne said...

Hi Gina - I got the quote from an article in "American Educator". The article, "How Words Cast Their Spell", appeared in the Winter 2008 - 2009 edition. Here is a link to a digital copy of the article from Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27454987/How-Words-Cast-Their-Spell

Gina said...

That's what I figured. But the authors of that article are wrong about the date and about a lot of other stuff in there.

You can read more about it here: http://linguisteducatorexchange.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/simply-put-part-i/

and here:
http://linguisteducatorexchange.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/simply-put-part-ii/

Laura Payne said...

Gina - Thank you so much for sharing. Fascinating stuff. I am embarrassed that I contributed to the error's traction. I guess that is what happens when so much information is available digitally and people don't take the time to fact-check. I would have thought that "American Educator" was a worthy source; apparently, I was wrong. Thanks again.

Gina said...

It happens! I think you're not alone in assuming that AE is reliable. Of course, the date error is just a typo, but the conceptual misapprehensions are really shameful for AE to put out there.

Thanks for your gracious response!

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