Complaints about how lazy and ignorant spell check has made us have abounded ever since the first red squiggly lines have started appearing on words.
As spell check has been around since I was expected to know how to spell, those complaints always seemed silly to me. Sure, basic spelling skills are fine, but if a little tool can take some of the stress off, why not? It's become instinctual to automatically right click over the inevitable typos and guesses and make everything all nice again. I assumed I had a nice system.
And then I started sending my work in for review with this summer job. And getting overall positive feedback. Except of course for the misspellings or typos. The first time was fine for my pride, just a little mistake. The second, and the third, well that started to feel a little humiliating.
So, for the first time ever, I'm actually making an effort to learn how to spell. Especially words like definitely, which I consistently spell wrong.
It's a simple, stupid little thing, but now when I see those little squiggles, rather than right clicking and choosing the right option, I'm actually making myself fix the words by myself. It doesn't take that much more effort, I still get the benefits of something else checking my work, but I walk away actually knowing how the word is supposed to be spelled.
Like I said, I'm not about to suddenly be an amazing speller, but it is nice to see my writing continuously getting less and less red.
I've always been mostly a good speller, but there are a few words I consistently spell wrong. I do try to change my red squiggly words by myself though. If I can't get it after 3 or 4 tries, I give in. :) I am unfortunately a gross over-user of commas. I don't think that will ever change. :)
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