The slipery slope 1

Ken Smith proposes that "'we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings" ("Just spell it like it is", 7 August). This sounds like an excellent response to feeling "fed up with correcting students' atrocious spelling". Next we can agree that 2 + 2 = 5 is a common variant that we'll accept, that the Second World War ended in 1947 and there were in fact only Seven Commandments.

William Gibson, Oxford Brookes University.