Yikes! I misspelled receive in an email to members of a committee I serve on. Thank goodness they are gardeners and not grammarians, and so far have been too polite to point out my mistake.
But it’s made me ponder the fast-paced world of email, and how the number of messages seems to be expanding exponentially. We write, we read, we respond all at lightning speed. We monitor email close to 24/7, via iPhones, BlackBerries, laptops. There’s little time anymore for thoughtful, well constructed, correctly punctuated and spelled emails. Instead, the pressure is on to respond quickly to those messages in our in boxes before we become overtaken by unread emails. And, of course, we churn out new emails to others, thus keeping them as frantic as we are.
Does it matter that a professional editor, in her haste to conduct personal business and finish a task, misspelled a word? It wasn’t that I didn’t know the correct spelling, and I noticed the mistake myself the next day. Still, it’s troublesome. For years my training and profession has pushed me to be exact and precise. Now years of discipline are being challenged.
I think too of my daughter, who from a very young age was a voracious reader but even now in graduate school is a terrible speller. When she was in eighth grade her English teacher tried to ease her father’s and my concern by suggesting that spell check was the answer. We were skeptical.
I suppose misspelling a word is not worth agonizing over—or angsting, as my colleague Cathy likes to say. It’s not as if anyone were harmed by my mistake. And the email went to only a few, apparently forgiving, people.
Maybe the answer is to slow down—and remember to spell check. Or maybe it’s to move on quickly and don’t sweat the small stuff. That could be a life-changing experience.
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Comments
Apr 8, 2008 11PM #
I rarely use a spellchecker. Sometimes it's just a waste of time since there are words that exist but not those you intend to use so the spellchecker will just go over it without calling your attention.
Actually, I check as I type. I edit as I type. If I'm copying something that makes me look away from the screen because I'm looking at the text I'm copying, my right pinky hits the backspace from time to time as if automatically spellchecking for me. :D
Being in the Philippines, and a Filipino myself, English is a second language (although it was my mother language) for many since it is taught in school.
With the success of technology in network communication, the Philippines was dubbed as the Text Capital of the World. Is it good? I say there are some good points and a bad point.
Some of the good points are: cheaper communication, communication even in remote areas, monopoly of landlines cut off. Bad point? Bad spellers grow by the thousands and millions as each texter tries to squeeze in more sentences to fit the minimum charge per text. Just like if you're good in math and can solve mentally, but you use your calculator more often than you use your head, the mental agility wears off and succumbs to the punch-and-see-the-answer method. As for the speller who enters 'c u tom' either in haste or in habit, the trained texter/reader know that it means 'see you tomorrow' but sometimes would get confused if 'tomorrow' is spelled with one or two Rs.
For some it would just be normal and just overlook the wrong spellings, either in full knowledge or in confusion, but for a writer like you, it's just perfect and normal that you cringe on your error. If it was my error, I would, too. :)
Apr 16, 2008 4PM #
I don't know about you, Roger, but my email has a "spell-check-before-sending" option.
Actually, automated spell checking has improved my writing, as the feature which highlights spelling (and grammatical) errors reinforces good behavior.
I'm using a Firefox spelling plug-in right now, too--and thanks to it's red underlining, removed an extraneous "u" from "behaviour," above.
May 4, 2008 9PM #
"Inbox" or "in-box" or "in box"? I notice that you have spelled it as "in box."
This is perhaps another one of those beautiful examples of how language evolves and changes over time. Some sources, especially internet sites, are already using the morphed version of the word; editors and grammarians are perhaps still hesitant.
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