I am hidious!

Back when I was in 7th grade I climbed pretty high up the area spelling bee ladder. I nailed killer hard words, but what did I get tripped up on? RECOMMEND! (I still remember the gasp that went up in the room when I finished spelling it with two C's.)

The spelling bee debacle sure cured me of my problem with recommend. But there are still a lot of words that I can never seem to learn. What is up with my mental block? Come, let us take a tour!

Viscious Huh, that isn't a word, is it? Yes, friends, I am trying to spell vicious here, and I had to go through some dictionary.com iterations to get this baby right. Because I want to spell it Viscious! I want an S in there!

Okay, then here's what always happens next: I take out the "i" and get viscous. Like a fool, I'll often put it in manuscripts, because viscous is a real word, meaning sticky and thick, so spellcheck doesn't pick it up. So I'll be like, "He was a mean and viscous fellow with a black goatee." And inevitably, somebody will laughingly point it out...Are you sure he was viscous, Carolyn?, and I'll be like, damn! Why is vicious spelled like that? It needs an S, and I don't think I have to remind you who agrees with me here, my brothers.

Occassionally Or is it occasionally? Or ocassion? I never know. I want there to be two 's's in it. The s/zh sound has way more presence when you say the word aloud than the C. Let's face it, the "s/zh" sound is the coolest part of the word, and it should have proper fanfare!

Independant This is what I always write for independent. Why do you not end with ANT? You should, you know. I mean, there are already two E's. it doesn't feel right that there would be YET ANOTHER. It seems like there should be an A somewhere. And also, Independent, have you never heard of pendant? A pendant hangs on a chain. Take it off the chain = independant.

Permanant Seriously, does permanent look right to you? Honestly? If you really really stare at it? It doesn't look right to me. Sometimes with a word you can't spell, you're supposed to change its form, and let that instruct you, but permanance seems perfectly viable to me.

Decieve, recieve and all that. Let me ask you, what good is that rhyme? 'I before E except after C, or when..." and then there's a list of exceptions. Yeah, that's really helpful. Because if you don't have the rest memorized, the rhyme might as well be, "I before E except after C, and also except when this rhyme is invalid." And you're back to your own devices. I actually have more problem with receive than deceive. In fact, this is a word I'll write around in client emails. I'll start an email 'I recieved the PDFs...' and then I'll be like, shit... Then I'll go, 'I got the PDFs' even though 'got' is feels unbusinessy to people.

Seperate I'm really fighting to get this one right, and sometimes I do spell it correctly, that is, separate. My trick is to remember that there is a para in there, the Greek root meaning by the side of, and that helps me, and sometimes I think about parallel, which also has para in it, to help guide me to spelling separate correctly. But, it's harder when it's a verb. (Let's seperate these two troublemakers!) because it's pronounced as if there's an E there.

Soldiar This might be my most embarrassing one. Who spells Soldier wrong? OMG. Is this post going too far? Am I divulging too much? I think the other words are acceptable misspellings, but soldiar strays into LOLcats territory.

Okay, dish people. What words can't you spell?

Image: self portrait of Antonio María Esquivel (1806, Sevilla – 1857, Madrid), from wikimedia. Sorry Antonio.