Grammar Moses: Fear of failure can make you a good speller

I know that all of us have done or said something that continues to embarrass us decades later.

I can safely say this, because no one younger than a couple decades old regularly reads this column. Hey, they don't know what they're missing.

I remember misspelling "cauldron" in a spelling bee. Yes, "cauldron." This must have been in the 1990s, before I adopted this persona.

A "chaldron" - the spelling I offered - in days when coal was the gold standard for clean power, was a measure of it.

I was dinged because that spelling had long gone by the boards even in the 1990s. I must have read the old spelling in a Charles Dickens novel and it lodged in my hippocampus.

If memory serves, I was out in the second round. What a disappointment. All I could think was how the reading public could not put its faith in a reporter who couldn't spell.

It still wasn't as embarrassing as the time four decades ago when as a reporting intern I misspelled "cemetery." I substituted the second "e" with an "a."

Not exactly a child's scrawl of "Pet Sematary" from the eponymous Stephen King book, but that embarrassment over which my boss had a good chuckle nearly made me rethink my career choice.

In the last couple of weeks we've had a number of 100-year-olds on the front page of the paper. First, there was the obituary for Henry Kissinger, who died at 100. Then Norman Lear at 101. And on Friday, we featured a photo of a couple of World War II veterans who were at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it to hell.

Managing Editor Lisa Miner mentioned we'd had a lot of centenarians in the paper recently, and it triggered another horrible memory for me.

I remember telling one of my bosses about a 106-year-old woman I'd be interviewing the next day. "She's a centurion," I said, whipping out a word more confidently than I should have.

"I'm sure she's not that old," the editor responded with a smile before explaining that a centenarian is at least 100 years old while a centurion is - or, rather, was - the commander of 100 men in ancient Roman armies.

Crushed was I.

You see, I take failure at any level much too seriously. However, it serves as a powerful motivator for me to research things properly, question everything and make sure I get it right.

It's also made me a spelling drill sergeant at work.

If I've misspelled something else and been called on it in what I consider my Modern Era, I don't remember it, which means it probably hasn't happened.

That's not braggadocio. That's fact.

This also explains why I prefer to listen to a guitar than play one, why I do not sing in public under any circumstance (I merely mouthed the words while in grade school chorus), and why if I am ever called on to dance, I would just as soon hobble myself Annie Wilkes-style (my Stephen King fanboy is showing) than waltz out on the dance floor with my wife.

Why she's stuck with me, I'll never know.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at

grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com

and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.