Re-read the post I was replying to. You were talking of children learning to spell. Mat isn't a child learning to spell. Adults normally have specific words that they can't spell and they mispell those over and over. They don't usually waver back and forth every five minutes from correct to incorrect spelling. Since we know Mat spells fine, it stands to reason that he shouldn't have trouble spelling every third word correctly in the 2nd letter he writes.

The only realistic explanation other than him being OOC is that he was spelling things wrong and crossing them out to be funny, but Mat doesn't do that type of funny. So he's OOC either way. Even the fact he used his signet ring to be proper... that was either an OOC joke or OOC because he's obviously sealed letters before and used his signet in the letter to Nynaeve and Elayne.


This is all rather nitpicky. I thought Brandon did a good job with Mat in ToM compared to TGS. But since he's my favorite character, of course I'm going to be nitpicky. Mat was always smart before, much smarter than anyone gave him credit for. He's been dumbed down quite a bit, and I don't mean just with that letter. He even has a somewhat hillbilly "voice" now. If you re-read a book with a lot of Mat, he never says stuff like "downright" and "don't rightly know." (for the record, no one in WoT does. Not in an "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" way, anyhow. "downright" was used twice in WoT before and they were both in unhillbillish ways). Mat has basically turned into Captain Mal from Firefly. Still funny, just different.


Now that I have that off my chest, I absolutely loved the paragraph from Mat to Teslyn about all of the rumors from the White Tower, especially the army of babies, and I'm certain BS wrote that.