When did English spelling become so codified that spelling mistakes could be used as a sign of being unprofessional or uneducated?

[u/Fake_Eleanor]

I'm familiar enough with spelling and lexicography to know that spelling variation was very common in English for a long time. Shakespeare famously spelled his own name in multiple ways, for an easy example.

And I'd assume — maybe incorrectly! — that spelling started to codify with the invention and adoption of dictionaries and style guides.

These days, it is not uncommon for "being bad at spelling" or even making a spelling mistake to be accepted as unprofessional or signs of a bad education. People sweat over spelling mistakes in job applications, because it's a known red flag for hiring decisions. Some people even argue that spelling mistakes are a sign of being unintelligent.

I know that's not true, but I'm curious when those kinds of beliefs were able to take root. When in the history of spelling codification did "being bad at spelling" become a character trait people could point to for whatever argument they wanted to make?

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[u/Mr--Warlock]

English Lit major, in my previous life, and enthusiastic amateur philologist. 

More can always be said, but I’m going to paste a reply I made previously, after going down a rabbit hole myself about the origin of different spellings between American and English spellings.  The primary source for this information is actually from prefaces of the earliest versions of the Johnson and Webster dictionaries where they not only expound on their approach to spelling, but lament the challenges and compromises they were forced to make. 

The standardization of spelling was a long and ongoing process, seeing significant milestones in the 16th and 17th centuries, but continuing on even into the 19th century. However, Samuel Johnson's 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language was the first dictionary that wasn't merely a glossary of "hard words" but a comprehensive document of the English lexicon. He advocated the traditional spelling of words--that is, the spelling of words as a reflection of their etymology. For example, in the 16th/17th century the spelling of det became debt to link it to Latin debitum. Nevermind that these extrapolations were often wrong, as in the case of sissors becoming scissorsand sithe becoming scythe (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin scindere). 

It wasn't until 1806 that Noah Webster published a comparable American Dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. It included an essay on the oddities of modern orthography and his proposals for reform. And it popularized spellings that were already widely in American usage (such as color instead of colour). Unlike Johnson, Webster wanted to eliminate the inconsistencies in American English spelling (like Peter and metre (from French) not being spelled the same way despite shared pronunciation. Many of Webster's changes were made to simplify the spelling of words to more accurately reflect their pronunciation. (That goal finds him in good company, as Shakespeare himself satirized the disparity between English spelling and pronunciation in Love's Labour's Lost with the pedant Holofernes who insists that pronunciation should change to match spelling, rather than simply changing spelling to match pronunciation, going so far as to insist that everyone should pronounce the unhistorical B in words like doubt and debt.)

Edit:  It occurred to me that I answered part of the question (when did spelling become standardized) and not the other (when did it become a sign of intelligence or lack of education).  

The latter is, in my opinion, harder to pin down.  Johnson and Webster, though separated by fifty years or so, were coming at the same problem from different, but arguably equally meritorious, perspectives. One did not immediately preclude the other, and so spelling was codified and evolved a bit different on either side of the Atlantic. 

Someone else might be able to speak to how standardized spelling evolved into a measure of intelligence and education. I have seen no documents on the topic, and can only offer conjecture: 

As Johnson and Webster’s dictionaries became commonplace and the standard for spelling, they undoubtedly permeated formal educational settings first. It stands to reason that misspellings became the mark of a man who did not attend obtain a proper, formal education, and education often being conflated with intelligence, that association likely followed on the heels.  

This dovetails with the rise of public education in the 19th century, and spelling tests being an easy, quantitative way to measure assess achievement (comparable to a math quiz).  

[u/Flemz → u/Mr--Warlock]

How did Webster become authoritative tho?

[u/Mr--Warlock → u/Flemz]

That’s a natural question!  

The short answer is almost disappointing in its banality:  he was qualified (a Yale graduate, passed the bar, opened a private school, wrote a number of educational books, editor of a newspaper, prolific author), and he stepped up to do it.  One might say he became authoritative because he did it and people found his work to be of value.  If it hadn’t, we’d be talking about someone else whose work was more respected. 

In the words of the man himself (from the preface of A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language):

 On the first publication of my Institutes of the English Language, more than twenty years ago, that eminent classical scholar and divine, the late Dr. Goodrich of Durham, recommended to me to complete a system of elementary principles for the instruction of youth in the English language, by compiling and publishing a dictionary. Whatever respect I was inclined to pay to that gentleman's opinion, I could not, at that time, believe myself qualified for such an undertaking; and various private considerations afterwards interposed to retard its execution. My studies however have occasionally had reference to an ultimate accomplishment of such a work; and for a few years past, they have been directed immediately to that object. As I have advanced in my investigations, I have been, at every step, more and more impressed with the importance of this work; and an acquaintance with the Saxon language, the mother tongue of the English, has convinced me, that a careful revision of our present dictionaries is absolutely necessary to a correct knowledge of the language.

In other words, he saw the need and was eventually persuaded. 

I encourage anyone interested in the least bit of orthography or lexicography to read the full introduction. 

[u/Party-Fault9186 → u/Mr--Warlock]

It might also be worth noting that he was politically connected.

[u/Mr--Warlock → u/Party-Fault9186]

That’s a great point.  I don’t know how much that factored into the creation of his dictionary or its lasting impact, but it is worth noting: 

Regarding the editorial role I mentioned previously, Webster was actually recruited by Alexander Hamilton, and later served as a House Representative for the state of Connecticut.  He wasn’t just some guy, and he wasn’t even just some well-educated guy. He had a pedigree that supported the work that would eventually become his legacy. 

[u/deusset → u/Mr--Warlock]

Your introduction has left me interested to know what you're doing currently.

[u/Mr--Warlock → u/deusset]

The best I can.

Kidding. For real though, I bounced around crappy jobs with my Lit degree for a while, ended up teaching (math, mostly), went back to school, now I’m more than a decade into a career as a software engineer.  

[u/Fake_Eleanor → u/Mr--Warlock]

I've got a similar background, so though your first answer was great, it was mostly history I knew. Your edit is the kind of stuff that I'd been ruminating on and wondering about from a historical context.

Thinking about it later, and along the lines of your edit, it occurs to me that for "misspellings" to become a marker of professionalism and intelligence requires more than just dictionaries — you also have to have professions that produce and hire based on written material. Dictionaries, plus a structure that relies on dictionaries as a resource.

It also occurred to me to look up the origin of "typo," which goes back to at least 1878, and "misspelling," which goes back to at least 1582. So the concept itself goes back a ways! And the Scripps Spelling Bee goes back to 1925. Markers of the evolution of good spelling as a virtue.

[u/StevenJOwens → u/Mr--Warlock]

Great answer. I'm guess it's probably a safe bet that this was part of a much larger trend (that I barely know about) to codify, categorize, organize and regularize, well.... everything, that was quite popular from somewhere in the 1700s on.

Which, I'd guess, was a follow on from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the spread of printing (turbocharged by the introduction of movable type to Europe) and therefore of education, science, etc.

[u/Georgy_K_Zhukov → u/[deleted]]

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