From: Gene McAloon 

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:59:07 GMT, John Beckett
 wrote:

>Mitchell quotes some writing from a teacher who consistenly
>misspelt a couple of words like "article". Many people could
do that sort
>of thing on a bad day, but if a native-English writer consistently made
>similar mistakes, it would be fair to conclude that they either had some
>internal miswiring, or were poor readers.

I think you give Mitchell far more credit than he deserves. At least on the
basis of what you have said of him, my impression is that he takes a far
too simplistic approach.

In the case of the teacher who consistently misspelled "article,"
it might be his brain is missing a connection somewhere, but that is highly
unlikely. Nor is
there any reason to believe he is a poor reader.  He may simply have had trouble
with that particular word since childhood and never quite got it
straightened out. The misspelling is probably "artical."  If that
is the misspelling that would be understandable. At that, if he is a touch
typist his fingers, so to speak, have learned to type the word that way and
do so automatically every time
unless he manages to catch it. That happens too.

I can see no connection between reading a lot  and knowing good grammar and
spelling well. Worse yet for Mitchell, I can see no justification even in
simple
logic to conclude that a person deficient in those skills is necessarily or even
likely a poor reader.

In short, screw Mitchell and all his kind. 

Gene

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