Lets talk about divergent spelling also known as sensational spelling. Don’t know what this is?

Well simply put divergent spelling is the deliberate misspelling or non standard alternative to a spelling of a word. Why would you purposely misspell a word?

Well divergent spelling is a popular advertising technique. A lot of companies big and small use this. An example of divergent spelling would be Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, or Froot Loops. The misspelling are used to attract attention or to render a trademark, more suggestive then merely descriptive. You can find these types of  misspellings everywhere from branding, pop culture, on the internet, and even in books. Though these types of spellings are imbedded in our culture I wonder how it affects young children. Explaining these “exceptions” can be difficult, but teaching when these exceptions are acceptable can be much more difficult.

When my daughters were small explaining that Krispy Kreme is not the proper spelling of these words individually was interesting. Not really knowing how exactly to explain why it is acceptable to misspell a word in this context is how I came to research divergent spelling. Then I changed my approach now we have fun games finding fun spellings of common words we know.