“K EEPING SCHOOLS closed has DEVESTATING effects” on children, America’s Republican Party tweeted from its official account, before hastily deleting the post amid mockery. It’s not just American conservatives who stumble with their spelling even when writing about education. Replying to a parliamentary query, the head of the schools inspectorate in Spain’s Balearic Islands misspelled “recoge” (“to collect”, among other things) as “recoje”. Listen to this story Enjoy more audio and podcasts oniOSorAndroid. Writing systems flummox people around the world. These days many in China use the roman alphabet to find and enter the complex Chinese characters on phones and computers, meaning they increasingly cannot write many characters without help. French children fear the