how the handbasket do you remember the correct spelling for words such as presence, absence, essence? (as opposed to incense and license (or licence)) where's the sense in this?

-joe (yes, I often look them up) friday

I don't know how the pavement that is done. I guess it may be a matter of remembering riffs, which English is full of.

I wish I could help, but to me, they just look wrong if spelled with an s instead of the c. Ditto that for the contrary. I learned most of my vocabulary from books though, so saw them before I heard them spoken aloud. This resulted in good spelling skills at the cost of correct pronunciation.

Um, at the end? How so very droll.... ;0)

I seem to remember at some time in the dim dark past being taught that verbs had 's' and nouns 'c', so that license means to give someone a licence, for example. But like everything else in English it appears far from consistent. You can't get incensed about incence for example, but only about incense. Sense? In English? ROFL.

Insense

In*sense"\, v. t. [Pref. in- in + sense.] To make to understand; to instruct. [Prov. Eng.] --Halliwell. Webster Revised 1996 , 1998

I'm sort of relieved that not only non natives have to deal with these arbitrary things.

So, you can get insensed about incense?

Ha! for years i never made a decision. I opted, i made a choice, i elected, i went for, i defaulted to, i stuck with, or i changed my mind.

I love spell check, it has slowly trained me, with a squigglely red line, and more understanding and Um, (another word, that mean quiet understanding, endurance, gentle fortitude (or if spelled wrong, a person seeing a doctor!)

trouble with that second word, it you can get it right (ie spell check doesn't point out a wrong combination of letters) and it can still be wrong.

Stationary or stationery? (finally stand has an A and write has an E... (and the first word with an A (ary) is standing still not moving, the second with an E (ery) is paper for writing on..

INSANE! I also hate silent letters! english words are packed full of them (and being told as a child to "sound them out" was a sort of cruel and unusually punishment, and being asked to spell them, torture.

but i'll be gneiss a and end my rant!

If nobody knows how to spell it; does it make any difference?

wun uv thu gratest riters ov tha inglish langwidge, Wilyum Shaksper, cudn't spel hiz oan naym dhe saim twys in uh roh.

Ah, that i were as gifted as he! then my odd spelling would be feature, not a flaw!

Not to mention the infamous ghoti!

Or esquimeaux

Especially if you could deliver it in unceasing iambic pentameter (is that the one?).

Heh. Yep!

He may have had doubts himself whether he was William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

Oor eevene goode Queene Bess hirself.

He may have had doubts himself whether he was William Shakespeare

My favorite candidate for author of the plays by Wm Shagsberd is Mercutio Florio.

One issue I've heard discussed is whether anyone without extensive exposure to or membership in the royal court could have written all the works credited to W. S. Was there any place else to hang out in and acquire sufficient knowledge?

Well considering he made up most of the detail in the plays about Royalty and got much of it quite historically wrong, it doesn't necessarily follow that he did in fact acquire sufficient knowlege.

Shakespeare apparently acquired sufficent knowledge to avoid characterizing or caricaturing powerful personages in a manner so objectionable as to result in his banishment, or worse.

Or sufficient tact to present previous Royal dynasties in a suitably unfavourable light so as to suck up to the Tudors.

Whatever Shakespeare's exposure to history and the ways of the royal court, at least he did not have the World Wide Web to distract him.

I'll go ahead and nail myself: Thou doth protest too much.

To deny is to affirm - Lenin

What do you mean I protest too much? Do you mean what the word meant in Shakespeare's day (ie affirm, confirm, attest, confess, aver, vow, etc) or what it means now (ie object, complain, etc)?

The quote by the way, is "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," and is Gertrude's comment on the play Hamlet has arranged when he asks her how she likes it. She is saying that the Queen in the play promised too much in declaring she would never marry another if her husband died.

Stationary or stationery? (finally stand has an A and write has an E... (and the first word with an A (ary) is standing still not moving, the second with an E (ery) is paper for writing on..

if something stays - it is stationary (the "a"s have it..)

if you are using stationery, you can use a pen or pencil (check the "e"s

Thou doth protest too much.

Doth is the (archaic) third person singular present indicative of do. The correct second person singular form would be Thou dost protest too much.

I became unable to connect here not long after making the ungrammatical quotation-based comment, and did not timely execute my common practice of posting first and consulting references later. The edit function spoils me. Corrected I stand.

Some might protest that I tortured protest or missed its meaning altogether. I was hinting at my having evidenced, by speaking of how distracting the web can be, the likelihood that I have firsthand experience of being distracted by–or, as a person assuming active responsibility would put it, distracting myself with–the web.

You should be a politician - by the time I got to the end of that sentence I'd forgotten what the beginning was!

Thanks for the light hammer blow. Some folks can get mean with the pein.