But spelling is usually not that important. It's not as if anyone is confused by the use of the incorrect word "phosphorous". While it's nice to have the correct spelling this is the kind of word that can fail spell check (because phosphorous can be correct in other contexts) it's not a serious typo.
It's not like silicone / silicon - often misused where people have to guess from context. (No one is getting a silicon breast implant; no one is making silicone chips.)
It's not like mistaking the units, 1.50 mg instead of 1.50 μg, or putting the decimal point in the wrong place, 1.50 μg instead of 15.0 μg.
Having said all that the Underground Grammarian makes a good point in "Trifles":
> Our educators, panting after professionalism, are little interested in being known for a picayune concern with trifles like spelling and punctuation. They would much rather make the world a better place. They have tried on the gowns of philosophers, psychologists, and priests. That's why, when they think of their "teaching goals," they say those things in the questionnaire. They see themselves as guides to emotional development, instigators of creative capacities, and molders of moral character. When they must attend to the factual content of some subject, they prefer to say that they impart that "general insight into the knowledge of a discipline." Niggling details, like spelling and punctuation, seem base by contrast with those noble goals. Our educators have established for us what may be a genuinely new kind of cultural institution--although it is something like the Austro-Hungarian Empire--that stubbornly avoids those undertakings in which it might succeed and passionately embraces those in which it must probably fail.
Sometimes true, but I've always thought it strange that people who spend much time with computers, and who know a horror story or two about seemingly trivial lexical errors resulting in catastrophes, object to those who correct spelling.
> It's not as if anyone is confused by the use of the incorrect word "phosphorous".
Not true. They're not even the same part of speech. The correct word is a noun, the misspelled word is (or can be) a verb.
In this case it went beyond a simple spelling error -- because the paper was technical and scientific, a different standard must be applied. In science publishing, how one spells technical terms is a deal-breaker. It is to science what "ingenious/ingenuous" means to a liberal arts graduate -- the difference is so great that it's a standing joke.
> It's not like silicone / silicon ...
Actually, to a biologist or a chemist, it's exactly like that.
> Having said all that the Underground Grammarian makes a good point in "Trifles" ...
I'm familiar with the piece and I agree with the sentiment, but this wasn't a trifle.
Writers regard this issue in the same way that musicians regard popular music. And scientists who publish must be writers as well as scientists.
It's not like silicone / silicon - often misused where people have to guess from context. (No one is getting a silicon breast implant; no one is making silicone chips.)
It's not like mistaking the units, 1.50 mg instead of 1.50 μg, or putting the decimal point in the wrong place, 1.50 μg instead of 15.0 μg.
Having said all that the Underground Grammarian makes a good point in "Trifles":
> Our educators, panting after professionalism, are little interested in being known for a picayune concern with trifles like spelling and punctuation. They would much rather make the world a better place. They have tried on the gowns of philosophers, psychologists, and priests. That's why, when they think of their "teaching goals," they say those things in the questionnaire. They see themselves as guides to emotional development, instigators of creative capacities, and molders of moral character. When they must attend to the factual content of some subject, they prefer to say that they impart that "general insight into the knowledge of a discipline." Niggling details, like spelling and punctuation, seem base by contrast with those noble goals. Our educators have established for us what may be a genuinely new kind of cultural institution--although it is something like the Austro-Hungarian Empire--that stubbornly avoids those undertakings in which it might succeed and passionately embraces those in which it must probably fail.
(It's a long piece and I didn't know which bit to use as a quote). (http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say...)