the archbishop of york dr temple thinks that correct punctuation is more important intellectually than correct spelling he said so yesterday when he presented the school prizes at the royal infant orphanage at wanstead in writing essays said dr temple there are two things one has difficulty with spelling and stops nearly everybody says it is the spelling that matters now spelling is one of the decencies of life like the proper use of knives and forks it looks slovenly and nasty if you spell wrongly like trying to eat your soup with a fork but intellectually spelling english spelling does not matter shakespeare spelt his own name at least four different ways and it may have puzzled his cashiers at the bank intellectually stops matter a great deal if you are getting your commas semi colons and full stops wrong it means that you are not getting your thoughts right and your mind is muddled Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage