Many of my readers may not be old enough, but I remember when the Vice-President of the United States was lambasted for mis-spelling a word.
As a person who has always been a cacographer, I can relate to our 44th VP. My problem was well known in high school, to the point that the newspaper employees gifted me a Webster’s New World Dictionary when I graduated in 1978.
Thank goodness my computer makes writing easier, bringing attention to most of my problems with a red line. Then it suggests the correct replacement.
I also rely on my wife, who proofreads my columns.
As you may surmise, composing reports in college on a typewriter was my Achilles heel. I try to forget those memories.
On June 15, 1992, Quayle altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa’s correct spelling of “potato” to “potatoe” at the Muñoz Rivera Elementary School spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey. Many do not know that, according to Ammon Shea, consulting editor for American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, potatoe was used in respectable publications until the Quayle incident.
Thanks to Quayle, everyone my age or older knows the correct spelling of this root vegetable.
Quayle and I are in good company. Several other historical figures had the same challenge. They include Jane Austen, George Washington, Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, Andrew Jackson, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
When Hemingway’s editor complained of his spelling, he would reply, “Well, that’s what you’re hired to correct!”
Dan Quayle’s never recovered from the “Potatoe Incident.”
If the truth is known, US Vice Presidents have always had a hard time garnishing respect.
Part of a VPs respect comes from their experience in Washington.
Our current vice president, Kamala Harris, with only four years as a senator before her current post, has one of shortest Washington resumes.
By contrast, George H. W. Bush started his vice presidency after serving two terms in congress and being the director of the CIA, envoy to China, a UN Ambassador and the Republican National Committee chair.
Thanks to Harris, most Americans are familiar with the term “word salad.” According to the Merriam-Webster.com a word salad is “a string of empty, incoherent, unintelligible, or nonsensical words or comments.”
There are too many examples from Harris in the last two years to reference in this short column. Here are a few:
Harris: “We invested an additional $12 billion into community banks, because we know community banks are in the community, and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talent and capacity of community.”
Harris: “So to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”
Harris on Roe V. Wade: ‘I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled …’
One of her latest word salads was last week on artificial intelligence. “I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it’s two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is, is it’s about machine learning. And so, the machine is taught — and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine — and we can predict then, if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process. So to reduce it down to its most simple point, this is part of the issue that we have here is thinking about what is going into a decision, and then whether that decision is actually legitimate and reflective of the needs and the life experiences of all the people.”
Speaking to crowds and appearing knowledgeable is difficult. Anyone who is not good at it should listen to Abraham Lincoln who said, it’s “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” Harris should heed that advice, but it may be too late for she is the “queen of word salads.”
According to thefreedictionary.com a cacographer is one who has poor spelling skills.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cacographer
