Truespel Spam?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I thought that *I* was the official grump on this list! Is the warm Florida 
sun making me nicer? Maybe I am missing the dull-witted student who always sat 
in the front row and insisted on challenging my every point. Anyway:

I agree thaqt Mr. "Truespel" is more than a little befuddled; his insistence 
on the virtues of his spelling reform is a bit pathetic. I ignore his postings 
most of the time. If I find them useful at all, it is as a reminder of how 
stubbornly ignorant people can be who invest an enormous amount of time and 
energy in a project about which they have very little professional competence. I 
would not call him "nontheological," I think of him as a sort of linguistic 
alchemist.

However, if Mr. Truespel is a spammer, so are most of us to one degree or 
another. I get multiple postings here every month from some prescriptivist, 
trying to get us interested in buying a subscription to his pseudolinguistic 
journal (can't remember its name). Dennis Baron often posts teasers for his web 
site. Several others continue to direct us to their blogs and LanguageLog 
postings. Subtle advertising for the various dictionary makers are all over the place 
in ADS-L. From time to time I let it be known that I do considerable forensic 
linguistic work (for which I am usually paid). Brothers and sisters, we are 
all sinners!

Mr. Truespel may be less subtle than most of us, and his tenacious dullness 
is sometimes exasperating, but I give him credit for sincerity, and my own 
opinion is that he is less concerned with selling books than making the world a 
better place through truespel. 


In a message dated 2/4/08 11:39:59 PM, strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM writes:


> This, and a lot of the other remarks about TZ are surprising in the light 
> of
> the ADS's own description of its members (from the home page): "Our members
> include academics and amateurs, professionals and dilettantes, teachers and
> writers."
> 
> There are a lot of "names" that have come to my mind when reading TZ's
> posts, too, but that's where they have stayed.
> 
> I am in no way condoning his behavior, however.  It does verge on spam
> sometimes, and that's completely wrong on a list like this.
> 




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