What he said:
Are computers destroying our ability to write good English? I am anti-spell-check, despising it as a crutch to enable the orthographically deficient to enjoy the illusion that they know how to spell words they actually can’t spell. So I never spell-check what I write here on the blog.
When I’m writing on Microsoft Word, as I do for my American Spectator articles, the “autocorrect” function will sometimes catch a typographical error. But an honest-to-God typo (when you accidently mis-type a word that you actually know how to spell) is one thing. Lazily relying on spell-check because you can’t be bothered to learn to spell? That’s something else.
Spelling is not a talent. Spelling is a skill.
That’s mostly true, though my ex-boyfriend, the Word-Search King, had unusual flair in this arena. (My emphasis on Stacy’s quote.)
No matter what instrument is being used for writing — a pencil, a laptop or a cell phone — good spelling and grammar still matter. If you do not habitually practice the habits of literacy, you run the risk of becoming semi-literate and incapable of effective writing.
Merely being able to write correctly is not, however, to be confused with writing well. That is to say, good grammar does not guarantee that what you are writing will be coherent or interesting.
James Thurber:
Don’t get the idea that writers never agree about anything, because they do, approximately twice during the course of an eight-hour evening. Their form of agreement goes roughly like this: “You are right, you are right, you are absolutely right! The trouble is, you don’t have the vaguest idea why you are.” The writer who is thus agreed with will, of course, disagree with the agreer, like this: “you are completely wrong, and so was I . . .”
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If I ever stopped copyediting my boss, our clients would think he’d had a stroke.
A wingnut bumpkin who hates technology?
Now there’s something you don’t read about every day.
Do you have a wingnut shoved up your ass? maybe you should try a high fiber diet. It may help you be less grouchy, and maybe get rid of your one note song.
I am shocked —shocked I tell you! — that ponce would write a personal-attack comment completely unrelated to the topic at hand.
Yeah, I vaguely wondered whether the “bumpkin” in question was Stacy, or me, or James Thurber, and how software as crude as a spellchecking program really qualifies as “technology.” And, if so, whether a sledgehammer would as well.
Then I thought, “whatever.”
Hehe, the bumpkin is Stacy.
I can understand someone who has so few skills to offer the world getting upset when some damn hippie gives away software for free that allows everyone to do that skill just as well as he can.
Good point! Because you’ve shown that good writers are a dime a . . . wait.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a good writer, LMA.
What Stacy does is more akin to a fringe right cow’s stomach.
He takes in what his leaders hand him, adds a little bile, then passes it down to those further down the wingnut digestive tract.
Ponce: spelling is not an isolated skill, no matter what the “Everyone is the same and self-esteem is important” crowd may tell you. Those who know foreign languages, have a wide vocabulary, and understand how words are constructed are often much better spellers than the general population, mostly because they understand why words are spelled the way they are. (Etymology is a speller’s best friend.)
Also, it’s not just about spelling. It’s about checking your work. A lot of people simply cannot be bothered to go through their letters, emails, or reports for any type of error, but spell check gives them a false sense of security.
On a side note, it has always been possible for bad spellers to check their work. Ever heard of a “Dictionary”, or do they not print them in moonbat language?
You don’t have to apologize for being a Luddite, Roxy.
However, if you whine about how people spell stuff on the internet, you may be accused of being a bit of a pedant.
Pretty soon, you’ll start to agree with him about Feminism and the heroic Schlafly. Shortly after that, you’ll consider becoming a Conservative.
That will be a great day.
And as someone who has excellent spelling, I always remind myself that George Washington, a far better man than I, had atrocious spelling.
Submit to the right-wing version of groupthink? Pass! 😉
That right there shows to go ya. Herding Conservatives/Libertarians is very much like herding cats. It must be that love for Liberty and self-awareness and individuality that is espoused and prevalent on the Conservative/Libertarian side of things, in contrast with the JournoList side.
Or, as my byline says, “I would rather be right than popular.”
John,
There’s a difference between
“Here’s the Constitution, and from this we can work out principles to follow…”
And
“The Party has declared this week that Joe, Bob, and Morg are Enemies of the State and to be hated, and Tim is now rehabilitated.”
Remember
This is the lady who says ‘extremist socons’ therefore revealing she’ s not all that conservative and ‘feminism can be rescued from the Left’ thereby revealing she’s had too many martinis. 🙂
Finally
If she were serious about the Hatred of Spellcheck (Cursed Be Its Name and Its Progeny Unto the Ninth Iteration!), she would remove the ‘Check spelling’ button from below her comment box and thus Clarify the Division Between Those Who Can and Tdose Woo Cavnot Spill.
It’s okay; that apparent Spellcheck is just an artifact from the template my webmistress used, and I’ve been assured (been complained to) that it doesn’t work.
But I’m not against it as a moral matter–rather, I find it very, very annoying. Likewise, the grammar programs don’t understand my compound sentences and keep complaining, and I have to be sure that I use documents as templates in Word that have those functions (spelling and grammar) turned off.
At the level I’m at, I just don’t produce enough typographical errors to make it worth the hassle to be badgered by my computer. YMMV.
Thank you for the explanation, Miss Attila.
I saw a huge billboard advertising something. I wasn’t exactly certain what the billboard was advertising.
SOFA’S FOR SALE
What possession of the sofa was for sale? And was ponce and ponce’s spellcheck responsible for the advertisement?
But I detest spellcheck myself. It’s not a crutch upon which the lame can depend but rather a piece of equipment that destroys the abilities of people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tLTb4P1HD8
Years ago, I had a co-worker who wanted to be a writer. She gave me a short story to read, and while she had a wonderful imagination, her terrible grammar and inability to use correct homonyms (like there, they’re and their) rendered the thing darned near unreadable. When I gently offered to help her fix it, she said there was no need because she has spell check and that nobody cares about grammar anymore. That saddened me.
I have a child in kindergarten, and in her class they write little stories. Her school encouraged the children to “sound out” words to write them and I noticed that misspelled words (wurds or wirds) weren’t corrected. I make my child fix them even though the school doesn’t seem to care because it’s easier to maintain good habits than to correct bad habits.
Spell check doesn’t catch every thing any way. It’s useful for typos, but not always.
And for decades calculators have destroyed people’s ability to do math.
I don’t feel bad about buying a GPS, though. It won’t ruin my sense of direction because I never had one to begin with.
Glad RoboMonkey mentioned GPS. People think I’m mental for not having it, but I have a much better idea of how to get around than I otherwise would without it. (Even printed directions make it tough to understand the lay of the land, at least for us visual-spacial people: maps help you to see how all the roads work.)
I try to ask myself if there is some underlying useful skill that the technology would displace, which is a different thing from just making my life easier. To me, that’s the difference between a Keurig and GPS.