“Eat Your Vegetables” of professional skills

Good writing and proper spelling are the “eat your vegetables” of professional skills. Job search hints always emphasize writing and spelling and college applications require excellent writing skills, but I think they are tremendously undervalued in the general culture. Schools want math and science teachers, not writing teachers. Winning the Spelling Bee is not considered as much as an accomplishment as winning the Math Contest.

So in defense of spelling – I was recently caught in a long, slow-moving security check line at an airport. I was texting my brother complaining that the “line was interminable,” but I didn’t know how to spell interminable. I asked my fellow line waiters. They didn’t know and thought it was quaint I wanted to spell something correctly in a text.

I’m either hopelessly outdated, a fuddyduddy, or a good person to edit your next newsletter!