Monet dines with friends

Giverny. A restaurant. Late 1891.

…

Money: And then he told me, “Waterlily has two “l”s, not three."

Gustav: Spelling isn’t everything. The best speller in my class at school never became anything worthwhile, remained inconsequential until he died.

Pierre: Shakespeare spelled his name half a dozen different ways.

Waiter: If I could add, in a hundred years from now, there will be a man called Berners-Lee who invents something greater than Gutenberg, and he will be a bad speller.

Money: Ah, relief. Spelling isn’t everything in life.

________

Voiceover

There may be a day coming when SMSers shatter language consistency by insisting on their ideolectal spelling variants and we are suddenly back in the Elizabethan age. Could the claim that good spellers are the bean counters of language be on the money?

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