A brief history of English spelling; or, 5 reasons why we should just chill

Call me ridiculous, but when I visit a company's website, I'm a lot less inclined to trust them if I spot a spelling mistake on their page. On Twitter or Facebook or in texts I really couldn't care less because I put it down to an honest mistake, and I get that for a lot of people spelling isn't a strong point, but when I see it in a corporate context it just makes me rage inside. Yesterday I visited the site of a catering company who insisted on spelling the word barbecue, 'barbeQue'. In my head I kept reading it as 'barbeck', which sounds like some kind of medieval dance.

But why does it annoy me so much? When I think about it, it's completely irrational. I mean, I know exactly what they meant to say, it's not a barrier to my understanding of the sentence. Where on earth did this concept of 'good spelling' and 'bad spelling' come from? After a bit of research, here's what I found:

The social network: a word of warning

For those of you that don't know, when I graduate in July I will (hopefully) have a degree in History of Art.*  To be completely honest, I prefer the 'history' bit; I love the thrill of piecing together evidence to form an understanding of the past, however meagre it may be.

I also find myself thinking a lot about how the future will judge our generation, the millennials. What evidence will they use to build a picture of us in their historical consciousness? What accessible resource do many of us pour fragments of ourselves into, like sand into an empty bucket? Yep. The good ol' social network.

Emmeline Pankhurst on our banknotes?

You may have heard a couple of weeks ago about the Bank of England's decision to replace Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note with Winston Churchill. As with every item of news, this caused an absolute furore on Twitter. Why was the only woman on our banknotes being replaced by a man? What was the Bank of England thinking, taking such a backwards step for women's rights? Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely disagree with the validity of these questions (although we'll get to my slight qualms about them later). I was, on the other hand, alarmed at the enormous amount of people blithely advocating Emmeline Pankhurst as a better substitute.

A day at Castle Howard

On Monday I escaped the miry bog of dissertation drear and hopped on a bus to Castle Howard with Alex. It's not actually a castle in the medieval sense; rather, it's a stately home built on the site of the original castle. If you're ever in the York area, I can't recommend this place enough, it's gorgeous!