What Are You Bad At?

I am terrible at spelling. When I was younger, I assumed I would outgrow this weakness, but here I am in my mid-20s, and the problem still exists. The good thing is nowadays I do most of my typing on the laptop or phone where wrong spelling is pointed out. But whenever I write on paper, I sometimes have to check my phone for spelling of certain words. I used to find this problem embarrassing in my college days, but not so much anymore. There’s a term for people who have poor spelling skills, and it’s called Cacography. While researching this topic, I came across a list of historical people who were known to be terrible at spelling, and here are a few that surprised me…

Jane Austen
“The author of Emma and Pride and Prejudice was always fortunate enough to find editors who could weed out her various alphabetical mishaps.”

Winston Churchill
Though he later became universally regarded as one of the greatest orators of all time, one of Churchill’s early report cards said: “writing is good but terribly slow - spelling about as bad as it well can be.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The original draft of The Great Gatsby contained hundreds of spelling errors, some of which are still confusing editors. This includes ‘yatch’ (instead of ‘ ‌yacht’) and ‘ ‌apon’ (instead of ‘ ‌upon’).” One of his biggest spelling error towards the end of the book is still debated to this date and is discussed here.

Agatha Christie
Known as one of the greatest mystery authors admitted to her poor spelling by saying “writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. . . [I was] an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.” She was also known to often misspell names of characters in her books.

Albert Einstein
English wasn’t his first language so it is understandable why it was a constant source of frustration for him. “I cannot write English,” he said, “because of the treacherous spelling.”

Alfred Mosher Butts
Knows to have invented Scrabble, Alfred said he wasn’t a good speller and was delighted when his scrabble scored reached 300. His wife, a school teacher, usually outplayed him.

Being a bad speller doesn’t mean you aren’t creative, and most certainly shouldn’t stop you from becoming a writer, if you’d like. :-)  One of my closest friends is terrible with directions, and no matter how many times he’s been to a particular place, he will still be lost.

You can read the complete list here.

Photo by Manu Schwendener.