Donald Trump’s spelling

In The New York Times, Farhad Manjoo makes a contrarian suggestion: “There are lots of reasons to criticize Mr. Trump’s policies, conduct and statements, especially his tweets. But we should lay off his spelling.” Manjoo makes three arguments: In a medium that encourages immediacy and error, a spelling mistake “suggests humanity.” To criticize spelling is “elitist.” And to focus on spelling “blinds us to content.” I’ll address each point:

~ Trump’s spelling mistakes — hear by, unpresidented, for instance — suggest much more than their writer’s “humanity.” They are signs of someone who reads very little. One learns how to spell words correctly by seeing them, again and again, in print, correctly spelled. Trump is, famously, a non-reader of books, and his errors are often those of a writer who spells by ear. And his administration’s carelessness about names and words in non-Twitter contexts suggests not ”humanity” but carelessness.

~ Manjoo argues that it’s an elitist mistake to equate correct spelling “with a good education and outsize intelligence.“ No. If anything, only the most naïve among us would equate correct spelling with intellectual superiority. Correct spelling, like correct punctuation, calls no attention to itself. When we read words in print, correct spelling should be something to take for granted. It’s certainly not evidence of a brainiac at work.

And to argue that ”everyone’s sloppy sometimes” and that Barack Obama and his staff also made spelling mistakes is a feeble defense. Carelessness is carelessness. But one can also look at the evidence of Obama error that Manjoo cites and consider whether, say, misspelling Frantz Fanon’s first name as Franz is at all comparable to mistaking, say, heel for heal. The first mistake is evidence of a writer who reads; the second, evidence of someone who doesn’t.

~ Yes, misspellings can blind us to content. And here I’ll cite Bryan Garner, writing about what he calls “the fallacy of intelligibility”:

Wrong words are like wrong notes in music: they spoil the tune. And wrong words make readers stop thinking about your message and start pondering your educational deficits.

If anyone tells you otherwise (that is, if someone says it don’t make no never-mind), don’t believe it.

I’ve had relatively little to say about Donald Trump’s misspellings, which speak for themselves. This post, like Farhad Manjoo’s column, has no mistakes in spelling.

Related reading
“Tapps” (A poem)
“No challenge is to great” (An inaugural poster)
No job too small (A handbill)
All OCA spelling and misspelling posts (Pinboard)