We take a lot of pleasure in congratulating Memorial Middle School eight grader Jazz Duncan for winning the 2013 Rockdale County Spelling Bee.

She is obviously a bright young woman with a love of words; we hope she carries that passion throughout her life and career.

The Spelling Bee may seem like an antiquated pasttime, in this age of social media, mobile technology and the advent of "chatspeak" - that style of abbreviated words that save time and effort while texting.

We ourselves struggle with grammatical and spelling errors, depend too much on spell check and find grammar programs are far from foolproof.

The senior member of our editorial board fondly - maybe not so much - remembers the days when the skill of learning to spell was backed up by Mr. Ruler. It wouldn’t surprise him if his dear Sr. Simplicia is today teaching the angels or their bad cousins how to spell with the same ruler.

We hope that Jazz cultivates her skills, and perhaps sometime in her future, she will find herself passing on the value of such a skill to the next generation.