Justine Larbalestier says we don't have to be spell well to be good writers. Well, thank the Gods for that, 'cause I suck at spelling. It's something I never paid attention to in school. It just wasn't important to me. And now I'm paying the price of that.
I have been getting better. Really. I'm sorta kinda cured. Well, maybe not. I fake it well, though.
Homophones always trip me up. Obscure words I've only used verbally also don't map out well. In a recent story I replaced "sexton" with "sextant." Sigh.
One of these days I'll right gooder then I usta did.
(and damn it if I didn't have to fight myself to correct that, even though I intensionally typed it that way)
6 comments:
Yeah, thank the Great Bird of the Universe for spell checkers. I blame my crappy spelling ability on the English language, which is a mash of loan words from every other decent language on the plant. The rules are not consistent, there's always an exception. Latin, I can spell because the words sound like they're spelled, but English? bah!
I spell so badly I have abandoned things simply because I could not spell what I was thinking. I spell so badly that spellcheck usually has no guesses for me. Now that is bad when spellcheck says "dude, you are on your own."
Me spell pretty someday.
Jim, spell checkers are fab, but they won't catch "right" and "write" or "breath" and "breathe." I rely on spell checkers a lot. Anymore I use the Mac OS spell checker a great deal (on a Carbon based program, place the mouse over the word you want to check and then hit Command, Control, D, you'll get a little pop up dialog with the deifinition, or a no definition available with a link to open the main dictionary which will give you options). I love it to death.
Kanrei, yeah, when the spell checker does the hand motion for a black jack dealer saying their out (almost like a "safe" call in baseball) you know it's time to look for another word. Although, I use many words that the Word checked doesn't know. It also often gets grammer (verb noun agreements in particular) wrong.
Todd, me three.
Dig the Sedaris reference.
Camille and Todd, I liked it as well. In fact, the first time I read Todd's comment, I read it as the book title.
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