Graffiti Spelling Improves

In December, Johns Hopkins University completed a comprehensive four year study that demonstrates that toilet stall graffiti writers (aka “those who write on sh*t-house walls”) are improving their spelling skills.

As part of his doctoral thesis, Associate Professor James Bernard has been tracking graffiti on walls in fourteen different restrooms in the Baltimore area. His hypothesis -- that stall squatters are improving their English skills -- seems to be proving correct. Prior studies have blamed poor spelling on complications caused by the simultaneous action of writing and performing a bowel movement, an action known in the academic world as “sh*t ‘n scribe”. But Bernard postulates that, “as part of the gradual rise in high school graduation rates, we expect better graffiti spelling, and we are seeing it in action in the real world.”

Bernard cites the following two examples of past common misspellings that are now being written correctly (bold type shows the words that are now being spelled correctly):
“Here I sit, broken hearted…”
“Words on Epileptic’s Medical Alert Tag: I’m not Break-dancing now.”

Bernard also noted that “the standard four-letter words have been spelled correctly from the beginning. But in the last two years, we have noted improvements when these words are accompanied with donkey or doughnut, particularly in reference to ex-girlfriends, bosses, and “Roger”.