Missspellling
As it happens, I’ve always been a pretty good speller, it just came naturally. So when word processing programs with spell checkers came along, I remember thinking I wouldn’t need such technology. But thankfully it would help those who do have trouble. Because I’m also the kind of person who immediately recognizes a misspelled word and gets annoyed by it–I’ve seen it happen on televised newscasts, in advertisements, and in national magazines and newspapers, let alone e-mail messages and blogs.
So imagine my horror when someone alerted me to a misspelled word in one of my blog posts (I’ve changed it, so if you missed it the first time, you’re out of luck). It was one of those mistakes I make all the time typing–inverting two of the letters–but catch in my reread or the spell check. But because I’m so sensitive to finding misspelled words in others’ work, it makes me crazy to find one in mine. I didn’t run the spell checker that day, either. I remember thinking–oh this is so short, why bother. Ha!
Add in that these days, with instant messaging and email messages sent from tiny Blackberry or cell phone keyboards, abbreviations and new spellings are the norm, and I’m finding it hard to adjust.
Does it bother you to find misspelled or, shall I say, newly spelled words out there? Does it make you crazy to find a mistake like that in your own work? And does it make someone less professional, or less seemingly intelligent, to occasionally mistype a word or spell it the way the works best for them, even if that doesn’t jive with Webster?