Language

With the year that we’ve all been having, writing has not always been at the forefront of my mind. With that said, I did spend August finishing another manuscript.

That’s not the prompt for this blog.

Recently I received an email stating that in one of my previous blogs, I had misspelled a word. At first, I reacted negatively, to myself, and did not respond. Then I realized that it wasn’t their fault to point out the error, which it wasn’t.

As I thought about the email, spam or not, it made me think about language. Spelling varies from country to country, especially with English. I’m in Australia and therefore how I spell words will vary from other English-speaking countries. Double l’s, the letter u, to name a couple of the most obvious. English usage down under keeps letters in words that other countries remove.

It also struck me that the email roused in me a sense that the author thought they were right and that I was wrong. There seemed to be no consideration for the origin of the word. As I said, I did not respond to the email, in case it was spam.

Don’t be quick to judge the spelling of a word because it disagrees with the way you were taught it to be spelt. Consider the origin of the author.

As I said, I’m an Australian author, therefore I will spell words the way I know. I will also use them in speech and description even if my location is not in Australia. It is the way I know. It is the way I write. It will always be the way I write. If we began to pander to all and sundry because they don’t like the way we spell a word, then we lose all our authenticity and integrity.

Write the way your soul tells you to write, not the way a specific society expects or request you to write.

Write on!

PS – forgive me if I’ve covered this topic before, but the email was a strong prompt to blog.