BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: John P
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 09:59 AM

A slightly tangential anecdote:

A poetry instructor warns his students against torturing syntax in order to fit it into a rhythm and rhyme scheme, "up with which I will not put".

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 10:15 AM

That is usually attributed to Winston Churchill...but... *shrug*... a good story eventually gets attributed to many people.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 10:21 AM

Ah-HA! Google knows all! (It didn't a few years ago when I first tried to chase down that "up with which" story.


lookee here

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 10:26 AM

And in the linked article, there is a link to an earlier story which makes almost exactly my point about famous people in its intro.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.html

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 04:25 PM

A report on a recent Republican whinge about some Homeland Security operations (begun by Bush & continued under Obama - maybe(?)) includes the statement:

The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security's own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a document should not be retained, "The U.S person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately."

[Boldface for the apparent subject of the sentence added.]

I guess I ain't gonna tell 'em nuthin, if that's their attitude.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 12 - 04:51 PM

Many years ago I had an English-instructor friend whose office on the campus of a large university bore a sign saying, "SPELL IT RIGHT OR GO TO HELL."

It didn't help any.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 10:07 AM

I'm not surprised it didn't help.

Sometimes we make mistakes because our fingers are typing faster than our brains are thinking. For example, I have a friend named Iris, and my fingers will often type Irish for her name. I try to catch it but sometimes fail.

Some people's brains simply are not attuned to spelling. They need sympathy and guidance, not cuss words.
=======
As for the 'authorities' who say things like "Most is the same as almost now because so many careless people use it that way", I have one thing to say.

Go through the book by that professor, columnist or pundit and see if he makes the mistake himself. You will find he doesn't. Neither does he split infinitives or write dangling modifiers, even though he writes that it is legit to do so. That's because he wants his own stuff to be considered high-quality, literate writing so he can keep his job.   

I consider that two-faced.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 02:05 PM

Typing too fast wasn't the problem.

The problem was not not learning how to spell in high school.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 05:19 PM

If you don't get 'basic' spelling by 5th or 6th grade, it's very hard to fill in the techniques later. There's always room for improvement though. My problem here is not being a touch typist. I have to look at my fingers....and I spell out words in my head as I type, and I do it mentally faster than my fingers, which results in typing the next lttre (see?) before the needed one. That's why I depend on a program that 'beeps' when it questions my spelling.

People 'set' their learning systems differently.... some are visual, some auditory. A combination of those can make learning to spell easier.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 07:31 PM

Hi, Bill. I know what you mean. I often see typos that occurred because they typist was thinking about a letter a few spaces ahead.

For example, "The loqo is unique." The typist was intrigued by the q to come, so accidentally put a q in 'logo.'

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 08:32 PM

I type with two fingers and I couldn't do it at all until I got a computer in 2002. All you have to do is proofread what you've typed. I hate making mistakes. I spend far more time checking what I've done than I do typing it in the first place. Sometimes I need to check my grammar and punctuation, but spellcheckers are alien to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Oct 12 - 10:59 PM

"spellcheckers are alien to me."

Hmm? Why? One saves my butt every day. It checks AS I type, as I use 2 fingers also.

http://tinyspell.numerit.com/

You tell it which dictionary to use (as in UK or US...etc.) and it beeps and YOU click a btter (arrghh..."click*)better word that it suggests..or not. It changes the word instantly.

If I am typing anything long, I can put a 'box' right above this area so I don't even have to look at the tray.

Best thing since sliced bread! (unless you like to slice your own bread)

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bugsy
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 01:18 AM

My spell checker keeps telling me that 'Colour' is the incorrect spelling for 'Colour' and that 'Color' is the correct spelling for 'Colour'.
It doesn't matter if I select UK or US English, it still tells me the same.

Now I'm going to sulk in the corner.

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 05:18 AM

I don't need a spelchekker. That's what I ment.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 09:09 AM

Thanks for the chuckle, Steve.

I have found that if I check something too soon, I don't find my errors. Apparently my brain is primed to see what it expects to see. After an hour, I see the errors.

I don't believe mere posts are worth the wait. A letter to a doctor or a bank, yes...

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 11:30 AM

well... MY spell checker tells me that 'colour' is NOT correct. I sulk in the corner over other things.... like the absence of a logic checker.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 01:40 PM

In my word processor (MS Word) both spelling and grammar can be checked "on the fly" as you type.

While I do use the spell check occasionally for words about which I suffer from "temporary uncertainty" I find that usually the "grammar check" is simply wrong, so I ignore its suggestions or just turn it off most of the time.

Fortunately there is the additional feature called "autoreplace" and since it executes after the spelling and grammar checks it can be easily used to override errors in the prior functions.

An automated feature to detect "caps lock errors" automatically changes upper case characters to lower case unless they follow a period (full stop) and space. This makes it impossible to type a number of "corporate names" that mix upper and lower case in the same "word." You can, however, put the correct typography into the autoreplace as "always replace" [whatever the spell check wants] with [what you really want] so that it will be automatically changed back after the checkers have changed it to wrong.

In the case of color vs colour, if you put "always replace color with colour" into the automatically replace as you type function, you should never see the "spellchecker's" incorrect correction again. (If your word processor includes the necessary smarts.)

The effective use of these functions is significantly more difficult in newer versions of Word (2007 and later) but that's just because Microsoft is adhering to its new motto "Only Idiots will buy our stuff" and have dutifully removed or hidden/obscured anything that someone who isn't an idiot might use. You can work around some of it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 02:12 PM

Caps Lock is the most useless key in the world. The first thing I do to any new keyboard is disable the damn thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 02:55 PM

Spell check is for idiots, but it is easy to remove.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 06:20 PM

As those who know me might guess, I have a pet program to control CAPSLOCK also.

FirstCap

It does almost anything you want with the key... if you haven't already removed it... *grin*

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Oct 12 - 07:26 PM

Once again, Bill D asserts his belief that it's better to have a separate program for each little trick than to learn to use what's built into ONE PROGRAM that can do them all. I will admit that RTFM is a foreign term to many.

Unfortunately, since the most recent incarnations of Word (and Office programs in general) I can no longer recommend RTFM as a solution for his problems, as there is no "FM"to which one can apply the "RT" instruction.

Just as Adobe must accept complete blame for the existence of Apple (early Macs implemented vector graphics that were extensively used in Adobe programs while "Windowish" programs didn't) Adobe has degenerated into being the primary source of malware vulnerabilities in all computers, while Microsoft has destroyed their flagships and turned them into toys useful only in kiddie pools in the backyard.

Power to ya Bill D.

(But you can still easily turn off the CapsLoc "correction" in Word, which turns it off in all Office programs, if you learned how to do it before they emasculated the program and removed all the useful Help.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bert
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 01:16 AM

Soon after I left school (at 15) I was unhappy with my spelling.

I made a list of the twenty words that gave me the most trouble, and took the effort to learn them.

It worked like a charm.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 03:10 AM

Back in the mid 40s or early 50s the Readers Digest ran occasional short "inserts" on words people have trouble spelling, and they encouraged people to send in their candidates for publication.

I still remember the contributor (most likely a pharmacist?) who complained I just cannot teach my secretary to spell bishydroxycoumarine ... [with a list of a dozen others of similar kind, at least some of which are probably spelled differently by now].

It still amazes me that such a simple word would stick so firmly in the mind of a 7 or 8 year old kid half a century later. Maybe it qualifies for "earworm" status?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 03:14 AM

I will admit that RTFM is a foreign term to many.

RTFM ?

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 03:17 AM

It's OK. I have worked it out now

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 03:46 AM

As another example of the things I objected to in my opening post, Avis Car Hire's website has just invited me to check car "availabilty".

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 04:44 PM

Ah, John... I almost NEVER use Word. My wife has the 2000 version, but I find it's like killing flies with a shotgun for the little word processing/editing I do.... and all those silly little tricks that are not a basic part of editing seem to me to 'usually' work better in a program designed especially for a single task or related tasks...and many 'little tricks' are automated and don't require me to "turn on & off" some setting....hence my CapSloCk behaves itself 98% of the time.
(I vaguely remember that one can do email & newsgroups in a browser, also.... but....)

   Because I use only very basic editing of text and HTML, I have several 'easier' editors, from a VERY basic sort to save simple text, to one that will do 94.318% of what Word will do. ... and after reading your comments about how MS has mucked up Word the last few iterations, I feel sorta smug...


(You... ummm.. don't wanta know how many media players, image viewers, and file managers I have.. ☺)

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 08:00 PM

Bill -

Because of contract requirements back when we used to work for a living, it was necessary for us to use Office programs, since the printers and other associated people insisted that everything they also read, edited, or printed had to be in Word. (But sometimes exported as !PS files.)

With the older versions, there were actually good help files, and it wasn't too hard to do some rather complex things, and trivial to do anything simple, once you found the instructions.

Since Office 2007, there have been NO HELP FILES in the program, and any search in Help gets nothing but the recommendation that you consult the "social networking support pages." For one fairly trivial problem I found "a few hundred" pages of queries about the problem. Detailed examination of a few more than 80 separate pages found lots of "answers" - ALL 100% WRONG and a good dozen that would destroy your computer if you tried to use them. There was NO COMMENT in any of them that could be reasonably interpreted as indicating interest by Microsoft.

VERY NEARLY all the old methods still work, if you remember the keyboard shortcuts to get to them, but there's no way for anyone new to the program to learn how to do much of anything that a third grader wouldn't know instinctively how to do without help.

Even though I'm no longer "locked into" Word, I still find it convenient to use it even when I want a simple plain text file (most often for a .bat to do something) since the most available other option is Notepad, which has limited file size capabilities and poor search and replace.

The "official" limits for Word aren't all that great, but I've found that many of them can be ignored. (I have a couple of single .doc files that won't fit on a CD so I have to put them on DVDs if I want to mail one of them somewhere.)

Since I've only got about 8 TB of hard drives handy for operating, archives, backup, and storage, for 3 computers, space for adding "trivially convenient" accessory programs is a little limited. (Of course I've got a handful of smaller HDs, 500GB and smaller, but they're only good for temporary stuff.)

Just on my main C:\ drive, omitting programs, in my documents folder a "DIR *.* /s >files.txt" writes a 1700 page text file list of the files in that folder.

Unfortunately(?) hardly any of the data I have would be of interest to anyone else, so I've left instructions that my hard drives be buried "with honors" when I'm gone. I care less about what's done with my bones.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 12 - 10:19 PM

Yep.. I remember that you spent years locked into MS products... you learned a good lot of the tricks, but I don't envy you.

(And you DO seem to have personal requirements that are not exactly average... I have maybe 15,000 song files, and I can still fii them all on one external drive!)

Ah well, "Different drives for different lives"

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: HuwG
Date: 07 Oct 12 - 03:54 PM

I recently had to send a form to the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, in Britain).

The luddites there forced me to download and print a seven-page PDF file, fill it in with black ink and post it to them. Why it is infeasible to fill it in and submit it online, I don't know, but that's by the by.

One section said correctly, "GP's name". Adjacent to it was another section, which said "Consultants name". Did anyone proof-read this form before making it available for download?

In my parents' day, public bodies were notorious for picking up minor solecisms in forms submitted to them, and sending them back to the person or organisation who had sent it and demand that they correct it before it could be accepted e.g. "Please insert a comma between the first and second items in the list of articles to which this form applies". I am very tempted indeed to send my form to the DVLA unsigned and undated, with a covering note requesting them to insert the necessary apostrophe before I am prepared to submit it. Unfortunately, they could claim that by doing so, I am failing to notify them of a medical condition as required by law, and fine me £1,000, so they rather have the initiative.

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Oct 12 - 10:20 PM

From an actual detention slip issued by the teacher:

"Student threw sandwhich across class screaming *yolo."

*you only live once

From several slips shown on www.shawconnect.ca

Shawconnect is a Calgary cable provider. They also make mistakes- The heading on a news item about an actress reads "Taylor Swift is never not shocked at everything."

Subject: RE: BS: Grumpy about Spelling Errors
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 07:10 PM

Just to update. I went to David Crystal's lecture last night, and it lived up to my expectations, though he apologized for having to also talk about the History of English in 100 words and the Chester Miracle Plays. Crystal is always an entertaining lecturer and makes no apologies for not adding anything to what's already in the book. If he's talking in next year's Chester Literature Festival, I'll be back.