Makes sense to me.

Even though I think it has been done before, perhaps a thread on Zodiac’s misspellings would be a good idea.
I don’t know if all of them have ever been put together in one post. I will try. And perhaps they can even be classified.
Thanks to entropy for the idea, I’ve collected these, please feel free to add to what I have found.

1) Egregious Mistakes:

CID – kid
CEROUS – curious
CLEW – clue
CYIPHER – cipher
DARCK – dark
FRUNT – front
HOWERS – hours
WOEMAN – woman

2) ING Mistakes

CRUZEING – cruising
HAVEING – having
LYEING – lying
RACEING – racing
TIREING – tiring
USEING – using
WAVEING – waving
WIPEING – wiping

3) Doubled letter mistakes (added, or omitted)

COUPPLE – couple
UNTILL – until
ORIGINALY – originally
SQEALLING – squealing
CHRISTMASS – christmas
COMMITT – commit
EFECT/EFECTIVE – effect/effective
BUSSY – busy
DISSAPEARED – disappeared
RUBED – rubbed
ALLREADY – already
APROX – approx
DIFICULT – difficult
POSIBLY – possibly
TRIGER – trigger
TERITORY – territory
BUTONS – buttons

I know that this is not a complete list. But maybe we could add to this thread and complete it? Would it be useful – I don’t know.

-glurk

Here’s a few other categorizations I’ve come up with:

Inability to distinguish use of s vs. z, s vs. c and c vs. k for similar sounds. This seems to be the source of many of Z’s worst and most tantalizing spelling errors:

cruse/cruzeing
noze
cerous
cid
promiced

Confusion of vowel sounds:
backwords
epasode
victoms
pencel
motorcicles
frunt
entirle
ventalate
machiene
woeman
saterical

Others?

It may seem like a useless, tedious exercise but I do believe that these TYPES of spelling errors would likely be found in z’s everyday handwriting.

Very good topic, but personally, I think his misspellings are done on purpose.

I’ve often wondered how many people can correctly use semi-colons but can’t spell.

I’ve often wondered how many people can correctly use semi-colons but can’t spell.

Not many I bet

Have you read the "Hunter among the Stars" thing you blokes? Good spelling insights from the author, who knows that stuff.
Lots of less interesting "Zodiacal" rubbish too, mind you.

Can you summarize the opinions on the spelling errors, smithy? Otherwise, I may need to wait for a Black Friday sale.

Sorry E., in truth I can’t. Not just copyright (which would be an issue I suspect) but also ‘cos they really do comprise about 1/2 the content of the book. It’s worth getting in that sale, yep.

I’ll put it on my Christmas list then. I was really just asking if the overall conclusion was that Z’s spelling errors were intentional or not but I’d definitely be interested in reading the analysis.

Mike’s point about the semi-colons is well-taken and I agree that Z’s grammar is actually pretty good. I’m also not really making a judgment on his level of intelligence or even education. There are a lot of bright people who are spelling challenged. A lot of folks will point out difficult words that he does spell correctly but these are often words, IMO, in which there is little phonetic ambiguity, i.e. there aren’t a lot of choices to be made about spelling rules. Most of his mistakes are phonetically understandable. Consider words like "pencel", "victom" or "epasode". These are spelled exactly as they sound so I would suggest that there are only a handful of really egregious spelling errors in the entire catalogue of letters. I respect that most people disagree and there are good arguments to be made on both sides.

I almost at times wonder if he wasn’t just having ‘some fun’.

I find it interesting that the words we see presented here as ‘not normal’ are words that can be played with phonetically. It’s subtle but it’s not, but it is because consider the word ‘not’ he didn’t play with that but he could have – ie knot. I like this thread because I’m not sure what these things tell us. For now I get the ‘feeling’ he was playing (there’s that word again Dave lol) – sorry, private joke.

We seem at times bound by patterns in our lives so it’s natural, and probably the reason why we look for them. What can those patterns or perceived patterns tell us in this instance? I know that is just basically repeating, in a different way, the questions that Entropy is asking in starting this thread but once I get typing and I think it sounds smart I can’t help myself lol. Soz.

Mostly I have to chase my thoughts, it’s like a video game up there. I envy those with ordered thinking lol.

Dont forget, there are letters in which Z misspells a word,and later on in the same letter, spells it correctly

I honestly had no opinion about the spelling mistakes when I first looked at them and my opinions go against the limited writing I’ve seen from my own person of interest. What surprised me in looking at the full list of errors was that the vast majority of mistakes fell into just a few categories of common mistakes like the confusion about when to use double letters. He seems to guess about these rules and sometimes figure it out once a word is written because it looks right or wrong on paper.

The alternative would seem to be that Z managed to carefully feign confusion over specific spelling rules and misuse them consistently through some fifteen or more letters over several years. That seems unlikely to me but again… just my opinion. I do think there’s a good discussion to be had with the mistakes. I’ll post a full letter by letter list eventually.

Hi-

If the Badlands letter is legit, what do you think then? I’ve always viewed this letter with its five syllable words to be a "f%^k you" that Z wrote to his pursuers, to show them he was not some illiterate. However, my mind was poisoned by Alan Keel, who said there is a 1974 forgery I’ve yet to track down. So you may have to hope that this is the one!

Mike