Spelling Ability

A few comments about the decline in spelling and grammar (May 29). In 1936 I graduated from San Pedro High School and was admitted to Stanford. All the entering freshmen had to take the “English A” exam in basic English. Three-quarters failed the exam and had to take what we called “dummy English” in the first quarter to bring their English up to a passable level!

Four years later, in Stanford Medical School, we were learning to do complete histories and physical exams on patients, with six- to eight-page write-ups including discussion of all the possible diagnoses and our final diagnosis. Dr. George Barnett, chief of medicine of the Stanford service at San Francisco City and County Hospital, personally went over every student’s write-up, correcting errors in red ink--but only errors in English, which he said we should have known by the second year of med school (and which most did not).

Things are (or seem) bad now, but were not as rosy in the past as many people like to think.

WOODROW MILLER MD

Los Angeles