On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 13:05:32 -0500, Steve Calvin
wrote:

Actually most browsers have a spell checker built in. But really, who
cares? If you can figure out what the person means in a world wide forum
then that should be good enough.

This is my *least* favorite argument for poor communication. We could
conceivably manage, probably not in print, with pointing and grunting.
OTOH, I regard newsgroup posts as "casual," not requiring rigorous
analysis before sending. Neither my typing nor my spelling is
error-free, and I don't expect everyone else's to be. If I were
composing a letter to editor of a newspaper, I would be *very* careful
about spelling, grammar, structure, etc. I would proofread,
spell-check, re-arrange, and otherwise edit my first draft. Not so
casual msgs to friends or newsgroup posts, although I try to make them
readable.

It's true that most errors can be "figured out," but it's a lot easier
to "figure" when someone doesn't write 'putat' for 'potato.'

People value language use differently. Our words appearing in public
*do* represent us. I don't know about others, but when I see "how do
gro pees," I'm less than inspired answer. I began a long
correspondence with a novelist when he asked me, in an entirely
different context, why so much of online communication was misspelled,
ungramatical, unpunctuated, and generally sub-standard. Simply because
I appeared literate, I gleaned a long and interesting correspondence,
a fancy lunch at Brown's Hotel in London with a best-selling Brit
novelist, and a number of signed, 1st edition popular novels. You
never know...