2 Comments

1. srsuleski
   Posted October 29, 2009 at 9:24 am | Permalink

   Did people really feel the need to nearly fall upon their swords for misspelling, back then? And here I thought that illiteracy was more common in the past than the present. Granted, these days we’re plagued by chatspeak (and I don’t mean an innocent “lol” here and there, but entire sentences comprised of numbers and abbreviations) but I thought the complete inability to read or write was more common in 18th century. So you’d think that a misspelling would be more kindly looked upon, because at least you *could* write.

2. Eli James
   Posted October 29, 2009 at 11:51 am | Permalink

   Ahh, good one, Sarah. I’d forgotten that literacy was much rarer back then than it is now. This article does seem logical when seen in that context.