Education in the Late 1800s, #2, Writing

Past blogs have focused on cursive penmanship and written communication in general.  Last week's blog focused on speaking, but the blog also included a quote decrying the impact of texting on grammar.  This week's blog focuses on Orthography, the art of written words, using the proper letters according to the standard usage of the rules of English.  Orthography includes spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.

As the various forms of social media have impacted letter writing and have reduced communication to phrases, "likes," and thumbs-ups, both spoken and written language have changed.  If you thought last week's grammar test for 8th graders in Salina, Kansas in 1895 was difficult, you may not be prepared for the Orthography Test those 8th graders were given!

Orthography  (Time limit for examination:  1 hour)

1.  What is meant by the following:  alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?

2.  What are elementary sounds?  How classified?

3.  What are the following, and give examples of each:  trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, lingual?

4.  Give four substitutes for caret 'U'.

5.  Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'.  Name two exceptions under each rule.

6.  Give two uses of silent letters in spelling.  Illustrate each.

7.  Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word:  bi-, dis-, mis-, pre-, semi-, post-, non-, inter-, mono-, sup-.

8.  Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, the name, the sign that indicates the sound:  card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9.  Use the following correctly in sentences:  cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10.  Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

St. John, KS School, late 1800s

Oh my gosh!  How did you do with this test?  Granted, if the 8th graders of 1895 were to come back to life today and were to be handed a laptop or a smart phone, they would surely need instruction, but how do you think today's students would do taking the orthography test above?

One of the ideas advanced by the Populist Movement in the late 1800s was using phonetic spelling in the newspapers and pamphlets they produced to make reading easier for emigrants just learning to speak English.  The idea was that they could sound out words they did not know how to spell.  Isaac Werner wrote an article for the populist newspaper, The County Capital, in which he used phonetic spelling.  I struggled to read it, and apparently other readers during the 1890s struggled as well, for his experiment in the newspaper was not repeated.

Robert S. McNamara wrote, "A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy."  Just because a computer is more legible and has spell check does not make us wiser nor elevate our thinking.  It makes writing easier and quicker, but not necessarily better.

In past blogs about penmanship, I have quoted authors who reject composing on their computers, believing that writing by hand forces them to be more thoughtful about what they are writing, more selective in the words they are choosing to express their thoughts.  Even before people were using computers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote, "I must write it all out, at any cost.  Writing is thinking."

As a student, I prepared for exams by hand writing an outline.  I might never look at the outline again once it was written, but the act of writing forced me to distill the content and understand what was important about the text or my notes from class.  "Writing was thinking," just as Lindbergh believed.

A too hasty romantic breakup reclaimed; Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

A wise friend in high school told me that when she was very angry with someone, she wrote them a letter, pouring out her anger and describing all the things they had done to make her so angry.  When she had finished carefully composing the letter, she tore it into pieces and threw it away.  Just as McNamara said, "A computer does not substitute for judgment," and a great deal of what is quickly typed on a computer or smart phone would be better torn into tiny pieces and thrown into the trash, I fear.

Classes in orthography in 1895 might not have taught students those wise lessons; however, perhaps reflecting more on the words we use might help us pause before flinging them beyond our ability to recall them later.