Pet Sematary. I mean cemetery. Or do I?

A small admission. For many years, until quite recently, I thought that 'sematary' was just the American English spelling of 'cemetery'.


My elder brother's copy of the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary (pictured) was to blame.

As I understand, in the novel the sign for the pet cemetery is incorrectly spelt, having been written by children (the sign, that is, not the novel). The title of the novel refers to that incorrectly spelt sign. But how was I supposed to know that?

Especially as I would be more inclined to say 'graveyard' anyway...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're probably not supposed to read most of Stephen King's books before the age of twelve.

Strange though, I also read this when I was fairly young and I don't remember ever getting confused over the use of the word Sematary. Without rereading it, it's hard to say how clearly this was explained in the book, but sometimes it's easy to miss a single sentence that clears things up.

Theodora said...

Heh. Understandable. I just read the book, at the age of 15, so the title didn't confuse me but it really bothered me, as did all the other cutesy misspellings on the graves. Apparently all the children in that town are borderline illiterate.

The Sensation said...

Spelt is not a word unless you are referring to a type of wheat. Spelled is what you're looking for.

Anonymous said...

Spelt is the British spelling.
Check unless you're certain.

Impetuous said...

Please don't call someone else a dumb ass when you obviously don't know a thing about the English language.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spelt
http://grammarist.com/spelling/spelled-spelt/

Impetuous said...

Sorry, but you seem to be mistaken.

http://grammarist.com/spelling/spelled-spelt/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spelt