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6-year old Lori Anne C. Madison of Woodbridge, Virginia, after the second round of the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition May 30, 2012 in National Harbor, Maryland. 278 spellers are competing in the 85th annual competition. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

BOSTON (CBS) Theyre finishing up the annual national spelling bee today, and if youve never sat down and watched the thing with a kid you care about, I strongly recommend it.

The kids are so smart, so poised, and its a rare example of intellectual excellence being given the star treatment and exposure normally reserved for athletic competition.

Listen to Jons commentary:

But the spelling bee also raises a question do we care about spelling as much as we used to, or as much as we should?

An article in yesterdays USA Today points out that proper spelling does still appear to matter in some quarters.

They quote one expert saying that when a paper or an application or a report or even an e-mail contains spelling errors, people who read it judge it harshly, and cite research showing that job applicants who submit resumes or applications with misspellings are statistically less likely to advance.

And it seems thats increasingly the rule, not the exception.

The experts say many schools no longer bother with spelling instruction, a 15-year trend linked with declining reading scores.

Even the detail-oriented Romney campaign has faltered in this way, putting out a press release this week that spelled America A-m-e-r-c-i-a.

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Keller @ Large: When You See A Word Misspelled, Do You Care?