Spellcheck

My friend Carol, the Short Jewish Gal, posted a funny piece about Spellcheck some time ago. Looking for the above illustration it led me back to her original entry. Check it out, it's funny. Then check this out, it's funny, too:

I had a bizarre vision of the future the other day. I was sitting down to write out a grocery list. That in itself is probably a task without much of a future. Nonetheless, as I sat there using a pencil to write out my list I started to pause on potatoes. Is it  potato or potatoe? potatos or potatoes? I'm actually a pretty good speller and find features like autocorrect to be more of a nuisance than a help. But it led me to this bizarre vision of the future:

In my vision I see a kid turning in a paper, a social studies paper or some such writing assignment. It's written long hand on lined paper. Upon getting the paper back the student is absolutely dumbfounded as to how the paper got marked down owing to spelling errors. After all, he had checked: Not one word was underlined in red after finishing and prior to his turning it in!

I also am left to wonder if we will see a gradual contracture of our language. The word contracture is a word my Mac doesn't like. But it is a real word and it's the word I want to use, so I'll just ignore the ominous underline in red. I'll continue to make an effort to find words that say what I mean even if they're uncommon and unrecognized by Word. Working to build your vocabulary is good for your brain as well as it keeps our language rich and colorful.

For now, I'll continue to write my grocery list long hand. After all, I may be among one of the last generations to commonly utilize paper based, hand-written communication.