Spelling trouble…

CHRIS BENNETT reckons that the Internet is weaving spells we could do without.

I IMAGINE it is in the nature of the beast that most journalists of my acquaintance tend to spell out full words in their communications, be they email, sms or Facebook. Twitter is perhaps a different beast.

A British analyst, Charles Duncombe, has now revealed in the Telegraph an interesting, although sadly not surprising, aspect of website communication, something we have come to accept as easily as the cellphone.

Mr Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. He also says that he is “shocked at the poor quality of written English.” Apparently the big problem for online firms isn't technology but finding staff who can spell.

It has surprised me on many occasions when I have spotted errors in the sub-editing of the online version of the Telegraph.

Of course one of the main reasons for this is the access young people have to the social websites and, more especially, to short messages, called, sensibly, texting in Britain. There is a danger somewhere here that the coded, truncated spelling used in texts will worm its way into the mainstream of English, if it hasn’t already done that.

The grandchildren of some of my friends tell me that they cannot use any kind of writing other than textspeak because they would be jeered at school.

"Often cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills," says Mr Duncombe.

Given that in Britain recently published figures show that internet sales are now running at £527m per week, I would have thought that alarm bells would be ringing in all corners of the English speaking world, which, of course, includes South Africa, where internet sales may be an emerging market, but a fast growing one.

Like me you have probably been the recipient of junk emails from other parts of Africa telling you that an enormous sum of money is waiting for you. The spelling in the email is a dead give-away.

Mr Duncombe tells of one applicant for a job he had advertised whose CV was entirely in textspeak, and largely incomprehensible.

His point is a good one, but I am not sure that we haven’t found ourselves shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Some months ago I was in Tshwane and came across a newly painted road marking which informed me SOTP. It took a moment or so for the penny to drop. The point of course is that the message simply does not get through as efficiently as the writer intended, if it gets through at all.

Signwriting used to be an art form; and in some cases it still is.

Last week, when I was still empowered by petrol, I drove to Port Edward. On the main road there are two entrances to Leisure Bay with clearly marked, professionally made signs; except one that howled at me “Leisure Veiw”.

It will, of course, all end in tears.