In an editorial with the same title, The Malta Independent earlier this month commented on the fact that in a country where bilingualism is the order of the day, it is hard today to find someone who can keep a conversation using Maltese only or English only. The education system and the media bombardment are among the reasons that have led to such a situation but, it was explained, at the end of the day a language is in constant evolution because of outside influences and it is therefore not surprising that there is an ongoing change in the way we speak and we write.

That editorial finished with a reference to spelling, and it is this subject that is on the agenda today, mostly because it is becoming increasingly evident that the more time passes, the more horrendous our spelling becomes.

This newspaper immediately admits that we are not immune to this problem. We have often committed mistakes. However careful we are and irrespective of the number of people a story goes through before it is published, there is always a risk that something could go wrong. And sometimes it does. It is easy to blame computers, but in most cases mistakes appear because of a human error.

Yet, it is one thing knowing your spelling and committing a typo, and another thing not knowing how to spell at all.

Technological advancements have improved our communications, but the victim of all this is the way we spell. Ask any teacher and he or she will tell you that texting and e-mailing have practically led to a rather fast decline in the spelling efficiency of their students. It is not the first time that they have received essays with “2U” written instead of “to you”.

Of course, it is not only students whose spelling is deteriorating. Even adults are finding it increasingly hard to write well. They have become so accustomed to bad spelling that even they have to think whether it should be “where” or “were”, and sometimes get it wrong too. Not to mention Maltese – the silent “gh” and “h” are slowly disappearing because they are simply left out; for example “xoghol” (work) in our SMSs has become “xol”.

No doubt, shortcuts have helped our spelling to deteriorate. Just take a look at the messages that crawl on the local television stations during programmes that invite viewers to send in their comments to get an idea of how bad our spelling is. Whether it is Maltese, English or a mixture of the two, very few are the messages that are written correctly.

Some might argue that these are only SMSs, and that people are able to write better if they are writing a formal letter. That might be the case, but nobody can deny the fact that these advancements in technology have negatively affected our spelling. Ask that same teacher again, and he or she will tell you that they have had instances of children arguing that their spelling is correct “because they have seen it on television”. These children think that, once it’s on TV, it’s perfectly correct.

Just as much as it is difficult to stop a language evolving because of the influences mentioned earlier, it is difficult to halt the slide in this respect too. But although it is not always wrong that a language evolves because of outside influences, on the other hand it is always wrong to spell a word incorrectly.

There is little that one can do to reverse the trend. But at least there should be a conscious effort to try to write words correctly.

PS: Every effort has been made to ensure there are no spelling mistakes in this editorial. If there are any, readers’ comments are, as always, welcome.