Good point about Latin. Great must have been the gnashing of teeth among educated Romans! More recently, there was a time when Scots was well on its way to becoming a distinct language, incomprehensible to the English. But we digress.

Have you run this thread through a spell-checker? You will find very few identifiable misspellings. Let's assume that one-time slips are typographical, rather than orthographical errors. That leaves a lot of typos.

(I just made a trip to the dictionary to check "identifiable". When in doubt, look it up!)

I do agree that spelling is not the most important element of communication. However, each error gives rise to a glitch in my comprehension of the writer's thoughts, like a wrong note in an otherwise beautiful solo.

I did not enjoy my high school typing class, but it gave me a skill that helped me greatly in college and later, on the job. And the big pay-off came when PC's appeared. The great advantage of the PC keyboard over the ordinary typewriter is the backspace key -- a chance to correct my typos before they are cast in stone.

In a world of PC's, perhaps typing should be required at some level in schools. As a bonus, the manual dexterity achieved in typing will help when learning to play a musical instrument!

== Johnny in Oklahoma City