Fair or not, your spelling skills are used throughout your life to evaluate you as a person. Several months ago, the results of a study of Fortune 500 human resource employees were published, saying that of the people they had interviewed, some 85% threw away a resume or cover letter that had as little as one or two spelling errors. The logic was, if you didn t care enough about your application to make sure everything was spelled correctly, than you couldn t be trusted to care enough about your job where a tiny spelling error might undo an important business deal or cost the company money.

But what if you re a reasonably intelligent person with a fairly good sense of written style who, for one reason or another, just doesn t spell very well? How do you improve your spelling, short of going back to elementary school and sitting through four or five grades of English class again? There are books and lists of commonly misspelled words available, but they re too overwhelming to be very useful. Looking things up in the dictionary isn t all that helpful if you don t know already that you don t know how to spell something — or if you can’t spell it well enough to find it!

Those of us who spell well have a hard time explaining it, too it just seems like a natural gift (and of course people who don t spell well often blame their lack of that gift ). We can tell people how to spell particular words, but explaining how to spell better overall is trickier. It doesn t help that we often look down on people who spell badly, seeing them as people of little education or little intelligence or both.

Wanting to help my kids learn to spell better, I went looking for some techniques and practices that teachers use to teach what is, after all, just a skill, like riding a bike or learning long division. Here are some of the things I found out:

There is no substitute for reading a lot. Just as we learn spoken language by hearing lots of people speaking, we learn written language, including spelling, by reading what a lot of people write. Spelling is not about how a word sounds, it s about how it looks on the page, which means you have to look at a lot of words on the page to learn how they are spelled. End of story, really the first step to improving your spelling has to be to read a lot (and it should go without saying, read a lot of stuff that s spelled correctly; txtng ur frnds may b fun bt isn t going 2 hlp ur spllng).
Make a list of your commonly misspelled words. When you catch yourself spelling the same word wrong over and over, write it down somewhere (back of a Moleskine is a good place). When you get a chance, look it up and put the correct spelling next to it. (Make sure you mark which is correct!) Unlike the massive lists of commonly misspelled words in the back of dictionaries and the like, this is a custom list that reflects the words and spelling rules you have trouble with so instead of a huge list of Other People s Problems you have a custom-made guide to your own.
Use mnemonics. There s an MnM in mnemonic! Mnemonics are memory tricks or devices, like i before e except after c . Since spelling rules are often abstract and, in English, even contradictory (what sound does gh make?), they are hard to memorize by themselves. Mnemonics sneak in through a different part of your mind, by rhyming, presenting an image, or forming a pattern that makes better sense than that s just how it s spelled .
Here are some examples of spelling mnemonics:
- It’s necessary to have 1 Collar and 2 Socks.
- A piece of pie
- You hear with your ear.
- Pull apart to separate.
- Definite has 2 i’s in it
- There is a place just like here.
- Because: Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants
- Cemetery has three e s eee! like a scream.
- IN NO CENTury is murder an innocent crime.
- Slaughter is LAUGHTER with an S at the beginning.
These are all taken from The North Coast Institute Learning Institute and Audiblox; check out these sites for more.
Study spelling with Carolyn. The National Spelling Bee offers a 36-week spelling course, a lesson a week, by Carolyn Andrews, an ex-teacher and spelling coach to her championship-winning son. Each week s lesson focuses on an aspect of spelling; taken a week at a time, it s a good way to cover the basics. Unfortunately, the site doesn t offer an RSS feed or email subscription; since the main page offers the most current lesson, you can monitor it for changes using a service like ChangeDetection.
Put a mark next to every word you look up in the dictionary. If you look it up more than once, add it to you personal list.
Write write write! The only way to really learn a word is to use it, and that counts for spelling as much as for learning its meaning. When you look up how to spell a word, write it down several times in a row, and do it again a day or two later you re trying to build up the motor memory of writing it correctly spelled. Write a blog, a journal, emails, a novel, anything that will keep you using words and pay special attention as you write to the words that come up wrong (spell-check is good for this, at least!). Let others read your writing, and ask them to circle misspelled words (or post it to a blog blog readers make especially harsh taskmasters where spelling errors are involved!)

Better minds than yours and mine have ranted about English spelling rules (or the lack thereof). There has been a near-constant drive for spelling reform for centuries, with advocates including Samuel Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Andrew Carnegie. These efforts have generally been failures, attempts to impose artificial corrections on the organic flow of language and writing.

English, it seems, won t be rationalized, leaving it to each of us to make peace with its foibles and somehow work out how to get things spelt. Hopefully these tips help you begin the process of patching up your own spelling. If you have any other tips, please let us know in the comments.

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15 Tips to Restart the Exercise Habit (and How to Keep It)

It s okay, you can finally admit it. It s been two months since you ve seen the inside of the gym. Getting sick, family crisis, overtime at work and school papers that needed to get finished all kept you for exercising. Now, the question is: how do you start again?

Once you have an exercise habit, it becomes automatic. You just go to the gym, there is no force involved. But after a month, two months or possibly a year off, it can be hard to get started again. Here are some tips to climb back on that treadmill after you ve fallen off.

Don t Break the Habit - The easiest way to keep things going is simply not to stop. Avoid long breaks in exercising or rebuilding the habit will take some effort. This may be advice a little too late for some people. But if you have an exercise habit going, don t drop it at the first sign of trouble.
Reward Showing Up - Woody Allen once said that, Half of life is showing up. I d argue that 90% of making a habit is just making the effort to get there. You can worry about your weight, amount of laps you run or the amount you can bench press later.
Commit for Thirty Days - Make a commitment to go every day (even just for 20 minutes) for one month. This will solidify the exercise habit. By making a commitment you also take pressure off yourself in the first weeks back of deciding whether to go.
Make it Fun - If you don t enjoy yourself at the gym, it is going to be hard to keep it a habit. There are thousands of ways you can move your body and exercise, so don t give up if you ve decided lifting weights or doing crunches isn t for you. Many large fitness centers will offer a range of programs that can suit your tastes.
Schedule During Quiet Hours - Don t put exercise time in a place where it will easily be pushed aside by something more important. Right after work or first thing in the morning are often good places to put it. Lunch-hour workouts might be too easy to skip if work demands start mounting.
Get a Buddy - Grab a friend to join you. Having a social aspect to exercising can boost your commitment to the exercise habit.
X Your Calendar - One person I know has the habit of drawing a red X through any day on the calendar he goes to the gym. The benefit of this is it quickly shows how long it has been since you ve gone to the gym. Keeping a steady amount of X s on your calendar is an easy way to motivate yourself.
Enjoyment Before Effort - After you finish any work out, ask yourself what parts you enjoyed and what parts you did not. As a rule, the enjoyable aspects of your workout will get done and the rest will be avoided. By focusing on how you can make workouts more enjoyable, you can make sure you want to keep going to the gym.
Create a Ritual - Your workout routine should become so ingrained that it becomes a ritual. This means that the time of day, place or cue automatically starts you towards grabbing your bag and heading out. If your workout times are completely random, it will be harder to benefit from the momentum of a ritual.
Stress Relief - What do you do when your stressed? Chances are it isn t running. But exercise can be a great way to relieve stress, releasing endorphin which will improve your mood. The next time you feel stressed or tired, try doing an exercise you enjoy. When stress relief is linked to exercise, it is easy to regain the habit even after a leave of absence.
Measure Fitness - Weight isn t always the best number to track. Increase in muscle can offset decreases in fat so the scale doesn t change even if your body is. But fitness improvements are a great way to stay motivated. Recording simple numbers such as the number of push-ups, sit-ups or speed you can run can help you see that the exercise is making you stronger and faster.
Habits First, Equipment Later - Fancy equipment doesn t create a habit for exercise. Despite this, some people still believe that buying a thousand dollar machine will make up for their inactivity. It won t. Start building the exercise habit first, only afterwards should you worry about having a personal gym.
Isolate Your Weakness - If falling off the exercise wagon is a common occurrence for you, find out why. Do you not enjoy exercising? Is it a lack of time? Is it feeling self-conscious at the gym? Is it a lack of fitness know-how? As soon as you can isolate your weakness, you can make steps to improve the situation.
Start Small - Trying to run fifteen miles your first workout isn t a good way to build a habit. Work below your capacity for the first few weeks to build the habit. Otherwise you might scare yourself off after a brutal workout.
Go for Yourself, Not to Impress - Going to the gym with the only goal of looking great is like starting a business with only the goal to make money. The effort can t justify the results. But if you go to the gym to push yourself, gain energy and have a good time, then you can keep going even when results are slow.

Scott Young is a university student who writes about productivity, habits and self-improvement. Scott has been featured on the Be Happy Dammit! Show.

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A simple way to reduce workday friction

The practice of courtesy is an effective antidote to the stresses of organizational life

Hamburger Management—the curse of all ultra-macho organizations—has no time for politeness or courtesy. In the faster, cheaper world of winner takes all, it s fine to tell lies (called spin ), deceive others (called PR), and bluff or cheat your way to success (called office politics). But taking the time to deal politely with others is classed as a pointless waste of effort that doesn t add to the bottom line.

This is yet another foolish, short-sighted mistake of that most mistaken of management techniques.

Courtesy and good manners exist as the oil that helps all kinds of contacts run without unnecessary friction or wear. It was assumed once to be the distinguishing mark of a civilized society which may explain why today it is becoming rare.

It s a bad mistake to see good manners as nothing more than empty rituals of a more formal way of living. Informality and courtesy are perfectly happy bedfellows. What distinguishes courtesy is not formal ritual but a natural concern for the other person—a wish to interact with them in a way that preserves or enhances their dignity and sense of well-being. You can do that and still be as relaxed and informal as you wish.

Helping life run smoothly
I called courtesy and good manners the oil in human relationships, at home or at work. It s a particularly apt analogy.

If you try to run a piece of machinery without lubrication, you will ruin it. Before final burnout and total seizure of all moving parts, there will be a great deal of heat, considerable wear and damage, and the spaces between surfaces will be filled with all kind of fragments and grit.

An organization without sufficient attention to simple courtesy suffers in much the same way.

A great deal of heat, hostility, aggression, and anger is generated rather quickly. As people rub up against each other, they cause irreparable damage and wear , twisting each other out of shape and distorting attitudes. All the minor, inevitable irritants of human life—the grit that would have been smoothed away by the lubrications of courtesy—build up until they scour relationships with pain and frustration.

Over time, more and more energy and effort has to be expended to keep the social machinery moving at all—an expenditure of energy that would be entirely unnecessary in a more civilized environment. Small sections probably burn out and stop working. People are permanently damaged. The atmosphere is thick with the smell of tension and friction.

There s no excuse for such a situation—certainly not the one that goes: business is about making money, not pandering to people s feelings. We all know perfectly well what to do. Organizations may resemble machines in many ways, but they aren t only machines. They re also complex human societies, with all the strengths and problems that brings.

Returning to civilized modes of working isn t being weak or non-competitive. It isn t based on ignoring financial and commercial realities in favor of touchy-feely idealism. It s a hard-headed response to seeing the amount of waste and damage being inflicted by callous approaches to coping with organizational reality and doing something about it.

After graduating from Cambridge University, Adrian’s career spanned local and national government, a series of corporate executive positions, and a partnership in a global consulting and business services firm, from which he retired as CEO of their US consulting arm. He runs two blogs: Slow Leadership and Slower Living and has published two books on the practice of leadership.

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