Rules of the Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet
1.
Anyone may enter Round One. Just get a writing tool
and paper. Note that this is NOT a team sport. You may use your own pen
or pencil or the ones we provide. [Please return them to us or leave them on the table.]
2.
For each round, PRINT your name in the upper right hand corner.
3.
Number your lines. There are 20 words in Round One,
15 in Round 2, 10 in Round 3, 5 in Round 4.
4.
Please print clearly, no cursive script. If we
can’t read it, we can’t determine if you were correct and your paper could be disqualified.
5.
Don't worry about Capitals, hyphens, spaces or diacritical marks (such
as cedillas or grave accents). We will ignore them.
6.
If you make a mistake, DO NOT ERASE OR INSERT LETTERS. PUT
A LINE THROUGH THE WORD AND WRITE AGAIN correctly next to the struck-out version.
7.
After we've called out all the words in the round, you'll have the opportunity
to ask for repeats.
8.
You'll have 20 seconds for each word.
9.
The following is a critical point. A schwa is
the sound of almost any unstressed vowel in English. We are careful to pronounce it as a schwa,
so repeating it will usually not provide a clue as to the correct vowel.
10.
You will grade your paper for the first round. We will
recheck those that appear qualified for going forward. We try to take about 20 people into the next round,
depending on where ties occur. [We take approximately 5 into Round 4.]
11. No
cell phone usage or text messaging, please. Smokers please sit on the bar side of the room.
12. While the general rules of word choice are: no proper nouns, no multiple spellings, no reuse of words,
etc. the committee reserves the right to include words that we consider especially interesting or timely.
13. If anyone becomes drunk and abusive or otherwise disruptive, we would welcome your help in calming
the situation.
14. Thank you for participating. We hope it is as fun and interesting for you as it
is for us to make the word selections.
