University lecturers should "ignor" students' appalling spelling mistakes and avoid giving themselves the "opertunity" to be riled.
I know I'm on dodgy ground picking up on anything to do with spelling working for the Grauniad, but it's an interesting point so bear with me.
In an opinion piece in today's Times Higher, Dr Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, makes the "arguement" that most misspelled words make more sense.
Rather than getting upset over "thier" for their, why bother with it at all? Why not replace it altogether with "there", he suggests.
"Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such," he argues.
The Spelling Society, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, certainly doesn't agree it's time to accept variant spellings just yet.
The society's chairman, Jack Bovill, says instead that redundant or silent letters in the printed form should be in a lighter, fainter type so that children learn 'knife', for example, is pronounced with a silent 'k'.
But he does concede that the purpose of the written word is to communicate and if the meaning is understood then there's no need to penalise people if the spelling is not traditional.
Surely letting awful spelling pass would lend weight to recent arguments made about degree standards? If you let students' sloppy spelling and grammar slide, does the work really deserve a first?
Standards will inevitably be questioned next week as A-level exam results spark the annual debate over whether it's easier to pass exams these days.
Today's BBC's music magazine gets in early with claims that students can get a grade A in GCSE music without reading or writing a single note. Notation forms such a small part of papers by all the main exam boards they can bypass the questions and still do well.
Should students at all stages be able to get away without a solid grasp of the basics - whether that be spelling, grammar or notation?
