I don't see what anybody's got against spell-checkers. I use mine religiously. As I see it, there's no way a spell-checker could, on its own, cause an error. It may fail to recognize some of your errors, so it's a bad idea to rely on them instead of doing your own proofreading. I use the spell-checker first and THEN proofread. I figure my life is easier and my output better for it. And I consider myself far from being "borderline illiterate."

Of course, if you click the Change button when you should click Ignore, or when you should type your own change, you can introduce errors or make them worse. But it seems silly to blame the spell-checker for that. It's just your own inattention—the same kind of inattention that causes errors WITHOUT spell-checkers.

Now the AutoCorrect tool—you can cause some real damage with that. If you want to play a real nasty prank on someone, mess with their AutoCorrect table.

By the way, I'm talking about Microsoft Word here. I don't know what the rest of you are using.

Come on, doesn't ANYBODY think it's funny that my spell-checker will (if I click "Change") change Charlton Heston to Charlatan Festoon?