Introduction

We all know what spelling is. Spelling is knowing how to write words correctly. But if that is what it is, why are there so many rules that seem to tell us how to relate the sound of a word in spoken language to the look of a word in written language? If spelling is simply a matter of reproducing, correctly, the remembered sequence of letters that make a written word, then all the stuff about the relation to the sound of language is quite beside the point. Or, perhaps, it is a marginal and quite separate matter, a question of having rules for sounding written language.