Seriously, the complaint is more about editing that spelling, I think. I spell badly, but I use the spell checker as a courtesy to those who may read the message. I am willing to edit.

We have a confusion over fact and opinion, a disdain for logic and methodical argument, and a rebellion against being told what to think. The result is that we haven’t learned how to think. This applies to an unwillingness to take the second or two to edit because people actually think having the first answer is better than having a well constructed answer. I’ve seen people post what we called “word salad” in the classroom because it was if the various parts of the sentence had been tossed together with the same enthusiasm one might use to coat greens with dressing.

A sort of fundamental laziness is combined with a misunderstanding of what quality is, and a reluctance to put in effort are all at work in some of the posts I see. The laziness is not being willing to make the effort to see the message through another’s eyes. The misunderstanding of quality comes form a sort of arrogance. It made sense to the poster when her or she wrote it, so it should make sense to the reader, and “should” is good enough. The reluctance to put in the effort comes from what I call the instant pudding mentality common today. It is as if anything that takes more than 5 minutes to prepare is too much trouble, and not worth the effort. The problem has been exacerbated by the instant message culture that seems to think that every little thing is both worth comment and not worth spelling out.

If you are still reading this very long answer, then you are not guilty of the sins I’ve addressed here. *L* Good.

Edit – After reading a few of the other posts regarding the questionable usefulness of “spell-check” programs, I felt called to share about a gentleman I used to know. His name was rightly spelled “P-e-n-i-x.” The local paper finally edited the spell checker dictionary they used so that it would stop giving a pass on the most typical typographical error!

English is a living language, so it changes. The spellings we use today were not always the accepted ones. We even sometimes have different accepted spellings for the same word.

Surprisingly enough, spelling errors have remained fairly constant over time. Here are some websites that identify the most common spelling errors made generally.

And I think this poem can help us understand why so many people have such trouble with English spelling.

When the English tongue we speak

Why is break not rhymed with freak?

Will you tell me why it’s true

We say sew, but likewise few?

And the maker of a verse,

Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?

Beard is not the same as heard,

Cord is different from word,

Cow is cow, but low is low,

Shoe is never rhymed with foe.

Think of hose and dose and lose,

And think of goose and yet of choose,

Think of comb and tomb and bomb,

Doll and roll and home and some.

And since pay is rhymed with say,

Why not paid with said I pray?

Think of blood and food and good;

Mould is not pronounced like could.

Wherefore done, but gone and lone –

Is there any reason known?

To sum up all, it seems to me

Sounds and letters don’t agree.

Hope you get a chuckle out of the poem.

If this is all we have to rely on now, we are in trouble in regards spelling. The machine will not do it for us. We have to reread what we wrote if we want it to go out clean. And buy dictionaries… seeing a word and everything about it on hard copy will help us learn the word and its usage. And dictionaries are fun, really!

I’m afraid of being left behind as a writer who actually cares that a word be spelled out and used correctly. Help me, Spell Check Of The Mind! (who/whatever that is–)

When I’m giving thumbs up or voting for best answer, I’ll almost always give it to someone who writes out their answer and spells right.

-MM