Death by Spelling: A Compendium of Tests, Super Tests, and Killer Bees

Is it galivant or gallivant? Would you ask for help from a sales clerk or a salesclerk? Where do those double letters go - misspelling or mispelling, withold or withhold, drunkenness or drunkeness? As David Grambs explains in the introduction to this irresistible collection of the world’s most difficult spelling bees, the world is not divided between good spellers and bad spellers — rather, it is made up of good spellers, bad spellers, and people who think they are good spellers. Death by Spelling gives you the chance to find out once and for all where you stand in respect to English — which, with its basic 500,000-word vocabulary, is the world’s richest language... and the most challenging for spellers. This is not another book of basic spelling-improvement tests but a frightening collection of more than 100 tests guaranteed to have even the most smugly confidant spellers running for their dictionaries. Along the way you’ll find fascinating spelling lore — like Benjamin Franklin’s efforts to reform our spelling system, and a brief history of why English is so mind-numbingly complicated — inspiring quotations from the world’s great spelling authorities, and a few of the more flagrant spelling errors that have found their way into print. Finally, there’s Death by Spelling College: a run of fifty devious special-interest tests ranging from American Cities (Tallahassee? Tallahasee?) to sports, where you’ll finally learn how to spell mashie niblick without disgracing yourself. For anyone who’s never recovered from the humiliation of losing a sixth-grade spelling bee over cantaloupe or from delivering a carefully proofread memo only to discover that whippoorwill has been spelled incorrectly six times on a single page, Death by Spelling is the best revenge.