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By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
In the cartoon panel called "Bizarro," a farmer is milking a cow. The cow turns her head and asks, "At your age, shouldn't you be thinking of weening yourself away from this and onto solid food?"
There is an English verb, to ween, meaning to hope or to intend, but the verb hasn't been used in 900 years. The creator of "Bizarro" wanted "weaning." Today's question: Why are comic strip artists such lousy spellers?
Let me expand the question: Whey do spelling errors occur so often in classified ads and official communications?
These are rhetorical questions, demanding no answers, but I will answer them anyhow. It is chiefly because English is taught so poorly in our public schools. But artists are presumably educated folks, and so are their syndicate editors. So what's the problem?
In "Buckles," the dog complains of something different in his food. He is certain that "some type of big insurance scandle is going on." On another day Buckles proposes to set a "picinic table." Yet again, the dog hears "a pounding sound of a ball hitting a mit." How could competent editors at King Features Syndicate miss the misspelling of scandal, picnic and mitt?
In the popular strip "Cathy," our plump heroine philosophically observes that "People subconsciously sabotoge their diets." The "Cathy’
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