I once read that spelling wasn’t really any kind of a thing until Webster invented the dictionary. Back in the day, people just put letters together based on the way things sounded or on some type of tradition. But that doesn’t explain words like “through” or “rough”. For those I guess it has to do with the Olde Inglish or whatever – welsh? I have no idea. But some type of Viking or isolated influence that has since been removed from our vernacular. So we’re left with a whole lot of weird words. Or is it “wierd”? I guess not since my Firefox spellchecker is underlining that one. It’s “i before e” after all. Except after “c”. And except when your writing about friends. So it’s all inconsistent. And I grew up as one of those annoying nerdy kids who aced the spelling tests and just basically always knows the right spelling and can point out when people write “there” when they mean “their” or my favorite, “then” and “than”.

Except that I’m also supposed to hate tradition and generally thumb my nose (what a stupid expression) at useless rules. Do I know what that person meant? Of course I do – if they had been speaking, there’d be little or nothing to clue me in to the difference in those words. So why the hell get uptight about it? It’s stupid.

So that’s something I’m working on – getting over the shitastic compulsion to notice spelling errors.

In parallel to all of that, I have been trying to bring in words like “thru”. Why must we type those extra bullshit letters? It’s dumb. I be done wit dat. I even keep that “thru” in proper documents. Of course, someone will always edit them out before they get published or shipped out to customers or whatever. But maybe one or two will slip thru, you know?

Now, I will say I’m not going to be about the “nu” or the “tru”. Maybe one day – baby steps. I also do have a certain sick sort of admiration for the 133t-speak and the loltok and the various other modern intarwebs types of dialogs that I see. Making shit up is good. And sometimes, making shit up that other people don’t quite understand is even better.

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