I think our disagreement at this point boils down to, “was the word in question deserving of having points subtracted from the score as opposed to being marked but not penalized“?

If the teacher in question was not only correcting this word but penalizing the student by counting points off excessive?

If A) the teacher in question never mentioned never mentioned that clear penmanship is necessary

(an assumption I don’t agree to since it is out of character…teachers actually want students to do well, so many less headaches when they do, so in most cases a student who pays attention will know exactly what to do and do well.

Side note: student attentiveness and effort is a far greater determiner of academic success than intelligence, intelligence just makes it easier, not more likely)

but if indeed the teacher did NOT tell the students they must write clearly, said teacher should not have counted off points.

Or B) if the teacher wasn’t inaccurately quoted and did not say the word appears miss written but rather said that it was misspelled, then the teacher was wrong to say that.

I think that the OP may be a misrepresentation of the facts as reported speech is often edited to portray only the position if the person making the claim that an injustice had been done. Therefore I’m not ”defending a teacher” per se, but rather offering a different perspective on the issue which I feel is more realistic and more in line with the nature of teachers behavior, and would be a rational justification for this question being marked wrong. It’s too common for people to color the information they provide to appear righteous, when whether they are right or not is not black and white.

Side note: You may find telling people they are lying in a disagreement is not in your best interest, as it is generally counterproductive towards achieving a resolution. It’s more likely to piss them off. It’s hard for me to imagine that it would get them to say “You caught me! I’m a big fat liar!” It’s more likely to have them become less open to your point of view than to accomplish anything productive.