Avoiding spelling mistakes.

Stanford University is a leading institution of higher learning in the United States of America. It is located near Palo Alto, California, close to Silicon Valley, the nickname for the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, in northern California. The word silicon referred to silicon chip manufacturers in the area, although now Silicon Valley houses many major high-tech corporations, as well as one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States. In Silicon Valley, microprocessors and microcomputers were first developed. For all these reasons, Stanford University plays a key role as a research and educational center. It is also the site of the Stanford University Press, a significant academic publisher. The Thammasat University Libraries own many books published by the Stanford University Press. So it is useful to spell the name Stanford correctly. Unfortunately, in Thai English it is sometimes written incorrectly as Standford. English words that are based on names are particularly difficult to get right, because names have more varieties of spellings than nouns or verbs do. Also, names do not follow a logic of spelling that some writers of Thai English may try to apply. For example, thinking about the name Stanford, we may think that there is an English word stand and another English word ford. Both are verbs, while the English name Ford is familiar from the Ford Motor Company. It is easy to then assume that the name Stanford should be spelled Standford. Yet that would be an error. Instead of trying to reproduce full English words when spelling an English name, we would have better results if we remember that full English words rarely appear in names. Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their son Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid fever at age 15. Since their son never got to go to university, the Stanford family wanted to offer better education for many other young people. The official full name of the institution is the Leland Stanford Junior University, although no one calls it that. Some Stanford students and professors do refer to the campus as The Farm. This is because the campus was built on what was previously a farm owned by the Stanford family. Its large size, of 12.8 square miles, made it a good-sized farm and it remains one of the biggest campuses in America. One way to remember the correct spelling of Stanford University would be to tell ourselves a little story, such as:

Stan Ford went to study at Stanford.

It is not important who the fictional Stan Ford is, but it is helpful to keep in mind that this is a common English language name. We have already seen that Ford is a well-known name to all Thais. As for Stan, here are some famous people named Stan:

• Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, and former president and chairman of Marvel Comics. He co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, the X-Men, and many other comic book superheroes. The TU Libraries own a DVD of Big Hero 6, a film that Stan Lee participated in. It may be seen at the Rewat Buddhinan Media Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library.

• Stan Laurel was an English comic actor, part of the famous film comedy team of Laurel and Hardy. The TU Libraries own Another Fine Dress: Role-play in the Films of Laurel and Hardy, an academic study of their movies through a gender studies perspective.

• Stan Getz was an American jazz saxophonist. Noted for his performances on the tenor saxophone, Getz’s recordings are not yet in the collection of the TU Libraries, but Thai music lovers should know his name because he performed with HM King Rama IX, who as all Thais know, was a highly accomplished and gifted jazz composer and performer.

• Stan Smith is a former champion tennis player who wrote the preface to Tennis Medic: Conditioning, Sports Medicine, and Total Fitness for Every Player, which is in the collection of the TU Libraries.

• Stan Kenton was a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who led an orchestra. The Stan Kenton Orchestra performs on a CD in the TU Libraries collection.

There are many more well-known people named Stan, but these should be enough for us to recall the name, and not be surprised by the existence of someone named Stan Ford, even if that person was just invented to remind us how to spell the name Stanford correctly. Another approach to avoiding a spelling error would be to Google all proper names used in academic research or theses, even the names we feel quite sure about how to spell. Since Googling only takes a few seconds at most, it can be a time-efficient solution to not making missteps. In academic writing or theses, if we must refer to a study done at Stanford University, or published by the Stanford University Press, and we spell the name Stanford wrong, it may seem to readers that we are not serious or careful researchers. For that reason it is worth the extra time, even when we feel no doubt about spelling a name, to Google it anyway. If we try to Google the wrong spelling Standford, Google quickly informs us:

Showing results for stanford

Search instead for standford

Without delay, the Google search engine indicates that we have used an unusual spelling for the familiar name. It assumes that we really meant to type Stanford instead of Standford. And it delivers:

About 124,000,000 results (1.62 seconds)

It is worth spending 1.62 seconds to find out that the name Stanford appears around 124 million times  in Google searches. Among the top results include:

Stanford University

Private university in Stanford, California

 

Stanford University (@Stanford) · Twitter

Stanford University – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

Stanford University (Stanford; officially Leland Stanford Junior University, colloquially the Farm) is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to …

If we still believe that we were correct to spell the name as Standford, we have the option of clicking on the choice:

Search instead for standford

The results are that Standford is the name of some places in the UK, for example:

Standford is a village in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is 1.3 miles east of Bordon, on the B3004 road. It is in the civil parish of Headley. The nearest railway station is Liphook, 2.8 miles southeast of the village. Wikipedia

But there is nothing about a university in California. We have confirmed that the correct way to spell the name of the university and its press is indeed Stanford, and although we may have felt certain in the past, we must change our minds now about using the wrong spelling Standford.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)