Carl Barks mostly made his Disney duck stories as a one-man army as opposed to most of his contemporaries' stories that were usually produced using different scriptwriters, pencilers, and inkers. Barks had introduced this his special working method in order to be able to make his stories in the tranquility of his own home, where he could concentrate on delivering the best end product possible.
But the method had a few drawbacks. One was that he had no one to turn to for proofreading of the stories' texts, narratives, and dialogues, and therefore it was unavoidable that he made occasional mistakes in spelling and grammar. Although he disliked English as a course in school, Barks later made up for his shortcomings while living in Roseville during the 1920s, at a time when he tried to earn a living as a novelist. Barks had come a long way spelling-wise and grammar-wise, when he started to make his duck stories a couple of decades later. His tremendous tenacity studying grammar books in Roseville had paid off!

But Barks' stories nevertheless contain a certain amount of spelling errors, and there must be a large degree of understanding and forgiveness on our part. A writer is always his or her own worst proofreader, as they are oblivious to a spelling error that would stand out to others. Furthermore, Barks did not have the same easy access to correcting his spelling as we have today via means such as electronic media. When in doubt, he could only turn to a dictionary. Luckily, this 'blockage' cleared up considerably when he, from the mid 1950s, received the steady and much needed help from his new wife, Garé, who would logically proofread his texts, as she also became the inker of same!

Notice: Barks made spelling errors in all of the different Disney series in which he was involved, but this page just focuses on the 10-pagers from the WDCS series. Furthermore, you are only presented to the most obvious examples of incorrect English spelling meaning that certain slang and dialects, where misspellings are expected, as well as borderline cases, are allowed. Also, words that are spelled slightly different today are omitted; one of the most striking examples is the word Horse-radish (found in WDCS126 (and especially in FC0495!)), which is nowadays spelled Horseradish.

SELF-CORRECTIONS

Barks was undoubtedly fairly strong in English grammar (for instance, his extensive correspondence through the years bears witness to that fact), and it is amusing to see that he was not afraid of teaching his readers some of the ropes. Here are two telling examples:

WDCS100     U$10B

HDL

Barks never misspelled the nephews' names, but it is puzzling that he never really got hold of them sequence-wise. After all, Americans would never think of switching the common phrase names Tom, Dick, and Harry around, but Barks had his trouble with the nephews' names. The official order of their names according to Disney is Huey, Dewey, and Louie (HDL), but Barks most frequently used the succession HLD starting in WDCS049. The correct combination (HDL) first emerged in WDCS079, but Barks soon fell back to other combinations. An entertaining example emerged in WDCS160, in which he managed two different combinations - in the same panel!!!

WDCS160

EXTRA

In 1976 Barks painted one of his greatest duck paintings titled July Fourth in Duckburg saluting the 200th anniversary of the birth of the USA as a nation. Originally, he made an error in the far right of the painting. He spelled Duckburg forgetting the K. By the time the painting was finished and framed, Barks made the necessary correction.