<p>Just sent to parents from my DS' high school...</p>
<p>"When we return in January, we will be entering the time of year for our most inclimate weather. Be sure to stay tuned to local news and radio as well as the school Website for any announcements regarding inclimate weather."</p>
<p>The inability of adults in positions of educational leadership to SPELL completely infuriates and discourages me. :( I'm sure this was written by his secretary, but still.....</p>
<p>We get messages like that, but laugh it off. Many of my friends speak in ways that are grammatically incorrect - around here it is common for people to say “i seen something” instead of “I saw”. Also very common even for educated people to say - the dishes ‘need washed’. It’s how they grew up and irritates us, but we get over it!</p>
<p>This drives me nuts, too, and I would either say something or mail in a correction.</p>
<p>Send a correction - usually it’s not a person in a position of educational leadership who actually writes these love notes. Be nice in the note and just tell them the appropriate word to use is inclement. I have sent a few corrections to the office over the years, generally get a few nice “thank you for pointing this or that out.”</p>
<p>Mama, where do you live? I have never heard anyone, educated or otherwise, say “the dishes need washed.”</p>
<p>Send it anonymously.
My mother used to horrify us by complaining to media folks that they should know better. Now that I’m older, yeahhh, some I’d like to correct.</p>
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<p>I know a few people - successful, educated people - who say this all the time (OK, not necessarily with regard to dishes, but similar statements). We currently live in the midwest. I never heard this when I lived on the east coast or in California.</p>
<p>As for the message from school, it would not surprise me if the principal wrote it himself. We frequently get messages from teachers and school administrators that contain poor spelling and/or grammar. It drives me nuts, but I would never correct them. When my D was in 9th grade her English teacher provided a point of extra credit for every grammatical or spelling error the students found in printed materials (school messages, newspapers, etc.) So my daughter was on a quest, and she found dozens and dozens of mistakes all over the place.</p>
<p>This kind of spelling error drives me crazy … I still have a flag from older d’s nursery school class from the inauguration of the first President Bush in which the words congratulations is spelled congradulations. Another one that is perhaps even better from when I was a sales rep at Scholastic Book Fairs, we were presented with our back to school promotional postcard that had been sent out to thousands of schools nationwide as “looking foward to working with you this year”. I was the only person of several hundred at our conference who saw had seen the spelling error.</p>
<p>My old neighbor would correct the school newsletters with a red pen and send them back. It didn’t help, but it made her feel better. I hope the principal did not make that mistake…</p>
<p>beth’s mom, thanks for the new linguistic info. </p>
<p>OP, That error would drive me insane. But I would not correct the principal, except anonymously.</p>
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<p>Don’t see what difference that makes.
They are still often written incorrectly.
Doesn’t matter by whom.</p>
<p>I see mistakes like that all the time on PowerPoint slides at meetings.
I correct them on the spot in front of everyone.
And you can be sure that I make a lot of friends that way. ;)</p>
<p>One of our principals once wrote I am committed to academic excelence.</p>
<p>The inclimate weather thing was posted on a local store and amused me…but not so amusing from an “educator.” </p>
<p>My child’s first grade teacher used to send home a weekly newsletter with spelling errors…guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the kid never really mastered spelling…</p>
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<p>I hear that pretty frequently as well, including my wife and her family. I can understand her family saying it since they never finished high school (or middle school in her father’s case). They grew up on the farm in rural NC and make more grammatical errors than you can imagine. My DW has gotten better about it because of my constant nagging but as a college grad and teacher I feel she should know better. She/they also say “might could” a lot which really bugs me. “I might could do that favor for you”.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that an underling may have written the principal’s message–if something goes out under your name, you check it first. So it’s either incompetence or laziness on the part of the principal–depressing in either case.</p>
<p>A midwestern nanny brought the “needs washed” language into our home, so I’m guessing it’s a regional expression that is used in conversation but probably not in writing.</p>
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<p>Why are you so sure about that? Our principal composes all of his own emails. I’m amazed you would assume she is somehow less educated, or at the least doesn’t use spellcheck.</p>
<p>I am going to remove the name of the school and put in Jughead to protect the graduates, but a family member received her high school diploma and it said on it- “Jughead Seperate School District”. They were very embarrassed and told the grads to return the diplomas for corrected one- but my relative kept hers on the theory that almost anyone can graduate from high school, but only a Jughead grad could have something done that poorly on the diploma!</p>
<p>The elimination of the words ‘to be’ is extremely common in SW PA, particularly with the word need. So many people - from teachers to elected officials, newscasters, etc, all use this form of speech. It was not common in NE Ohio where I grew up.</p>
<p>The car needs washed, bills need paid, dog needs fed…</p>
<p>In an age of Word and spell-check, is there any excuse to use a word like that (inclimate)??
Or any misspelled word??</p>
<p>The GT teacher with a PhD at my D’s elementary school was such a poor writer and poor speller, that all of the parents were horrified. She had been teaching for years, and was not a young teacher. We would all talk about her grammatical errors and run on sentences. I think they kept her in the GT classroom, because she would not do as much harm there. Sometimes, typos are typos, and not a sign, of not being able to spell, but the grammar errors are harder to excuse.</p>