Slashdot Mirror
Is Typing Ruining Your Ability To Spell?
NSN A392-99-964-5927 writes "My handwriting abilities have deteriorated over the years. Putting a real pen to paper, I get frustrated over how to spell correctly, as I am so accustomed to using a keyboard and knowing where the letters are. Having spoken to a few friends, I've found that this has become apparent to them, too. I've noticed that my grammar is also affected; maybe this is because I spent too much time on IRC and lowered my standards. Hand-written words are now becoming obsolete. There is often no need to think about writing anymore, or about how something is spelled. Are other Slashdotters having the same problem? (I'm used to Telex machines, which should give you an indication of how old I am.)"
...using a spelling-correcting keyboard has made my typing skills deteriorate noticeably. It's especially noticeable when I'm trying to use vi.
it's ruining my ability to finish a
HAND.
... penmanship is no longer a scholastic requirement. Long live printing!
Thank god for spill check.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I usually try to stick to full sentences when typing(though my abuse of commas and parenthetical comments is egregious) so I don't think that it has done my grammar much harm.
Spelling, also, seems to be ok. Because I can't quite trust automatic spell checks, I still find that making spelling mistakes carries a small cost in time and annoyance. However, my spelling mistakes do annoy me a great deal more when I am writing; because I don't have an easy way to look up corrected spellings and corrections tend to be messy.
As for "writing" more broadly, I've not found any reason to think that computers reduce the need for that. Until we come up with an interface that allows me to dump mental state directly to the machine, and shove that around, writing will still be the only real option for expressing complex ideas in a reasonably precise and concise manner.
Typing has definitely reduced my ability to hand write quickly and legibly, but not my ability to spell. I think spelling has been affected more by the fact that I write much less now than a long time ago.
I have always been a terrible speller it was always my least favorite part of school because it was a matter more about rote memorization and nothing to do with logic. I find the instant feed back loop from modern spell checkers, the ones that underline mistakes once I complete a word, help me to learn the correct spelling.
My problem is even now that my spelling is better I still have no confidence in my ability to spell when I don't have that safety net.
My IM client (pidgin) underlines misspelled words in red, as does firefox, so I've found that my spelling has actually been getting better. I tend to actually learn the correct spelling over time.
I think you're problem is their are people out they're who got better grammer then ewe and your just jealous.
It's a lot of things, but not typing. Of course, tyling produces typoos, but that's not a matter of spelling, it's a matter of hitting the worng keys. A little proofreading fixes that.
Spill chuckers oar bad four spilling. Eye wish pee pull wood stoop ewe sing them.
Personally, when I see someone using the wrong homonym, like "the ball is in there court", it has a negative effect on my opinion of their intelligence. The same goes for the misuse of apostrophes; WHY do people think you need an apostrophe for a plural? Sometimes I'll reply with a link to the Bob the Angry Flower cartoon "Bob's quick giude to the apostrophe, you idiots".
Maybe it's being innundated by posts from sub-adults who are texting in class instead of paying attention to the teacher.
2 L8, brb
Free Martian Whores!
My handwriting has gone to crap, but what does that have to do with spelling? If anything, I would think that spelling would be more likely to improve, thanks to the slower pace of writing by hand. I pay more attention to what I am writing when I have to take the time to write it out by hand.
If the quality of your writing is going down, I suspect that has to do with the quality of the writing you are consuming.
What is the point of this confession or whatever it seems to be? Do you want my attention? Do you want me to agree with you? I don't... I've been typing and using the interwebz for about 14 years now with plenty of IRC, 1337 speak, and degenerate behavior --- and in all that I have maintained my cognitive capacity to recognize the difference between the variants and the proper.
I think your problem (if you feel there is any, such as an employer wondering why you write like a 12 year old), probably stems from the lack of regard for your variance as 'variance', and embracing that way too often, if not completely, as a way of life.
In excess, nearly anything can be problematic. Maintain a balance between work and play; in this case having a deliberate regard for maintaining both your interwebz-bs-style and your proper-for-work-and-standards style.
What I mean is... you need to actually give a shit about what you're doing. Degenerate yourself for fun, but not for habit.
Your problem isn't that it's rote memorization -- I'm terrible at anything requiring rote memorization. Your problem (and a lot of other peoples') is you don't read enough books. I urge you and everyone else to acquaint yourselves with you local public library, or if you're in college, its library.
Readaholics never have trouble with spelling, unless all they read is the internet.
Free Martian Whores!
It's a multitouch keyboard that does dynamic spelling correction based on what you've already typed, what you type next (it issues backspaces to correct prior keystrokes), and the fractional location of a finger-tap within or between key areas. It's slick beyond words. Apple bought the tech, and is ever-so-slowly dribbling it out in their iPhone/iPod Touch and trackpads.
Comment removed based on user account deletion