Dan Quayle’s “potatoe” misspelling did not mean that he was stupid, but rather that he was educated in a government school. In my family, parochial school attendees spell with few, if any, errors. Those who attended government, or public, schools misspell common English words.
I had noticed for some time that newspapers printed many staff spelling errors. (Computerized spell checkers appear to have reduced errors in recent years.) The “potatoe” fuss led me to compile and document lists of spelling errors, from the AP, various newspapers, and TV news. Here’s a list of spelling errors I culled from the New York Times, which most national journalists would have read,. Most errors were made in the year following “potatoe”:
Ascerbic, acerbicly, giving them advise, allegience, alter for altar, annointed, Ashville, beggers, burgandy, social calender, canvas for canvass, Capitol for Capital, chisled features, coddling moth, compatable, complemented for complimented, complimented for complemented, contract extention, cruicial, curriculums vitae, rather than the consistent curricula vitae, defendent, descendent, desparately, Diosese, disasterous, discernable, discrepency, dissention, duplicitious, epigramatic, eratic, in essense, Expatriots Enticed Back, flare for flair, Fullbright for Fulbright, gardner for gardener, gutteral, hanger for hangar, [Vincent Foster was] a longtime confident and law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Harlan Matthews is a confidante, hoards of reporters, horde for hoard, idiosynchratic, inadvertant, irrelevent, kibutz [intended for kibitz, not kibbutz], Ted Koppell, laudibly, masters candidate rather than master’s, McNeil-Lehrer, migrane, Napolean, nerve-wracking, occassionally, opponants, past for passed, peak for peek, pecadillos, Penetentiary, perogatives, perseverence, pouring for poring, pretention, principle for principal, principal for principle, publically (the only AP reference in this list, but appearing in The Times), quintissential, recruitor, free reign, reign on inventory, repellant, resistent, rhinocerous, roomate, San Fransisco, a seemy stretch of dirt-encrusted tenements, under seige, sqaller [a bit distant from squalor, but that’s the intended word], stationary for stationery, statuatory controls, in dire straights, strategem, sulpher dioxide, superintendant, supervisers, supress, Tazmanian Devil, typography for topography, wisened for wizened, and wretch for retch.
Journalists and others who mocked Quayle either could not spell well themselves or were partisans who chose to blame “potatoe” on Quayle and not the instructional methods that made so many Americans poor spellers, including Quayle and many journalists, as readers of the Times should have noticed.
