Grading student papers are always a wonderful way for me to learn tons of new (and incorrect) things. Not one but TWO of my students, for example, seem to believe that Poe was born in the fifteenth century. This may come to a surprise to the current literary authorities, who regard him as a notable American literary figure AFTER Columbus.
One of the things I had never noticed before was all of the many many different ways to spell the word “tuberculosis.” Several of Poe’s friends and relations died of this particular disease, and it ended up as the answer to a fill-in-the-blank test question. The day before the test while we were reviewing, I pointed out to them that if they weren’t sure of how to spell tuberculosis, they could always use the common abbreviation (TB). At least one of them, however, was forced to butcher the spelling of the name of this particular malady because they could not REMEMBER the abbreviation. Several others abbreviated it “tB” for some reason. In any event, I kept track of the number of different spellings I got for the word, and I now present them to you:
tuberculosous
tuberculasis
turberculosis
tuberculois
tubiculosious
teberculosis
turbuculosious
tuberuloucious
turburculosis
terberculosis
toberqulosis
toburclosis
tuberculcosis
terbeculosis
teburquloscis
tuberclulosis
tubucaloses
turburculosis
terburculosis
tubertulocsis
terberculocus
tubercliosis
terbisuloses
terburculoses
terbulosis
tieberticuloses
tuberlocisis
Mind you, that’s 27 different spellings of the word (28, counting the right one) that I got. That’s a fairly wide variation, considering the number that spelled it correctly, used some variant of the abbreviation, or wrote “cancer” (which was incorrect) instead.
By far the most amusing response that I got on the test, however, was one involving the poem “The Raven”. According to this slightly misspelled but accidentally hilarious fill-in-the-blank question:
“In ‘The Raven,’ the narrator is sitting in his room when he hears a raping and a taping at his chamber door.”
Wow.