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.)"

Comments

I don't know, but...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...using a spelling-correcting keyboard has made my typing skills deteriorate noticeably. It's especially noticeable when I'm trying to use vi.

Re:I don't know, but...

[VoyagerRadio]

That's why I've always maintained correct/proper capitalization and grammar and compete sentences, even in IMs and IRC chats. In fact, it actually slows me down when I have to purposely corrupt a text message in order to reduce its size (such as on Twitter or SMS).

Re:I don't know, but...

[larien]

Working in a large business where writing professional emails helps as well; I purposely try to use proper capitilisation and punctuation as required.

That said, I rarely write anything these days and it's often just a scrawl when I do. My writing was never up to much anyway, without practice it's deteriorated.

Re:I don't know, but...

[winkydink]

capitalization is especially important - consider the sentence:

i helped my uncle jack off a horse

Re:I don't know, but...

[Dogtanian]

One other thing...

I even have difficulty signing my name sometimes, but that's mostly because cursive is my most unpracticed form.

You obviously don't sign your name that much then.

My signature used to look like a vaguely "signaturey" version of my handwriting. At some stage- I think it was around 10 years ago when I had to sign things a lot as part of my job- it became detached from my handwriting and got more and more stylised.

Nowadays it's bordering on a meaningless squiggle; only the first letter is remotely legible. I can still see parts of it, but that's mainly because I know my own name and know what it's meant to be.

Its only *real* value- and the only intended one!- is that it looks like my other meaningless signature squiggles. :)

But back to the point- my signature has very little to do with my (not bad) handwriting these days. (^_^)

Re:I don't know, but...

[James McP]

Typing is muscle memory just like playing music. Guitarists don't consciously think "E-G-A-E-G-B/A-E-G-E-E-G" any more than a typist thinks "s-m-o-k-e- -o-n- -t-h-e- -w-a-t-e-r". (Well, bassists might but we're known to be pretty dense.)

I actually had trouble typing the hyphenated parts as my hands initially would spell out the whole words.

Have you never had a case where your fingers know your password but you don't? Happens to me all the time.

No, but

[warrax_666]

it's ruining my ability to finish a

Well, that and the age and alchohol

[elrous0]

Thank god for spill check.

No

[GroundBounce]

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'm getting better.

[tthomas48]

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.

Your Jealous

[Maltheus]

I think you're problem is their are people out they're who got better grammer then ewe and your just jealous.

It's not the typing

[mcgrew]

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

Is this a confession?

[joocemann]

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.

Re:I find my spelling has actually improved over t

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:I don't think it has been a problem.

[Tacvek]

Abuse of parenthetical comments? Like having nested parenthetical comments that make reading the original difficult? I do that too.

The recommended solution is the use of footnotes[1], since somebody can jump down to them, read them, then jump back up and easily reread the whole sentence ignoring them[2].

[1] Like this.
[2] Further footnotes allow nesting without any difficulties[3] such as avoiding parentheses mismatch.
[3] That said, nested footnotes should be use sparingly[4], as with too many layers it can be hard to reverse back up the stack.
[4] And recursive footnotes should never be used[4].
[5] Unreferenced footnotes are also something to avoid.

FingerWorks TouchStream

[jeffb (2.718)]

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.

Re:FingerWorks TouchStream

[Bandman]

I'm pretty sure I would stab that keyboard in short order. Unless it knows unix commands, of course.

Re:I don't think it has been a problem.

[TheRaven64]

[4] And recursive footnotes should never be used[4].

At least it's a tail-recursive footnote[1], so a good brain will just infinite loop, rather than overflowing the stack.

[1] Unlike a non-tail-recursive footnote[1] would look like this one.

Re:I don't think it has been a problem.

[pavon]

Unreferenced footnotes aren't the worst[6] thing you could do.