Evening star., 1909-09-12
COLLEGE SPELLING c
juniors and Seniors MuddIe
Their Letters.
SLIP UP ON EASY WORDS
Write Stupendous Essays, But Man
gle 0rthography
LIBERTIES WITH LANGUAGE
Students Make Curious Mistakes.
Teacher Tabulates Results and
Draws Conclusions.

William r Pale Assistant Professor Of Politi-
cal Economy at Yale University in the In
aereEdcat.
Soon after. Easter of this year the
members Of my course in American
Social Conditions in Yale College sub
lifted their essays upon the relation OF
tire local to the state government in the
towns or cities in Which they lived. There
were nearly 2-1 students in the course.
about two-ifths 81 whom were seniors
ard three-iiftns juniors. The average
'eagth of the essays VAS tritie less
tsir 5000 words. About third Of the
ESSAYS were typewritten. while III were
IN the handwriting NJ the students. Those
written BY Eaud were the first 20 be read,
md | was struck al the start BY the
number of msspel!ed words. According
". to relieve the tedium Of the reading,
and 10 determine the frequency of these
mistakes. a list was made of the words
misspelled by The men whose essays were
n their own handwriting
As a result or this tabulation some in
ierestins facts appear.
In % essays there was not miSspelled
Word In 81 per cent Of the cases less
than 10 words were incorrect, while in
II per cent 10 or more were miSspeled.
one man misspelled ~ and another 81
words. he average per student was al
most exactly >
Since a number of men mfsspelled the
same word several times in an essay the
total cases OF misspeling were much
more numerous than the total number of
different words misspelled Thus IL
per cent of the men made less than 10
mistakes in spelling. while ~ per cent
made 10 or over. Two made made 4J
mistakes each. The total number of
cases OF misspelling was 231 from III
-
per essay.
There were i43 different words in
correctly spelled in these papers. Of
these, 315 We're misspelled in but one
essay. There were 10 words in which
mistakes were made by over 10 men. and
IN l case there were Il offenders and in
another 90.
The number of times in which certain
words were misspelled shows great
variations. We find 80 words which
We're misspelled but once, while p were
mlsspelied 10 or more times. One word
was incorrect in 80 cases two in II while
1 was misspelled 81 times
Where They Stumbled.
In $50 cases the words were misspeled
IN only one way. but in forty-one cases
they were incorrectly spelled in two diff
ferent ways; in ten cases in three ways;
in five cases. four ways; while one word
offers a choice of five different methods,
and another of six The word privilege
was a stumbling block to seventeen men
Eour men insisted on spelling il. priva-
lege, three men each preferred privilege
privilege or privilege, while four men
divided their choice equally between
privilege and privilege. We have au-
thority for spelling comptroller as comp
trollar, controller or comptroller, while
one man, confident that the letter D
should appear, chose contromplar Com
mittee was n1isspelled by six men, who
were divided between commtte COM
mitee. comittee and comitee. To the men
from New York city Bellevue Hospital
became Bellvue. Belvue, BeIleview and
Bellview. To ten men the chief state
executive was governor, to two gov
erner. while to one each he was governor
or govener. Borough and incompetent
were misspelled in four different ways
each, while appellate and council offered
three choices. Superintendent and sep
arate were misspelled by twenty-nine and
sixteen men respectively, but all made
the same mistake
1t IS of interest 70 determine the char
acter of the mistakes which were most
frequently made.