The efficency of misspelling
Kids today are busy, and they have a lot of communicating to do. They work in many media: cell phones, E-mail, instant messaging, text messaging etc. And they don't have time to waste on things that slow down the info-torrent they spew out. What kind of things slow down their precious communications?
Well, correct spelling for one.
I used to chastise my daughters for sending me emails filled withtypos. I noticed that my complaints would immediately result in emailswith perfect spelling. I’d like to picture them reaching this resultby training their minds to develop a keen awareness of how words arespelled, and then thoughtfully applying this awareness to the E-mailsthey sent to their wise father. Instead, I know the reality is is morelike this: they hastily typed out the E-mail and then huffed withfrustration at having to run spell check right before they sent it.
Of course, all I saw when I read the E-mail was perfect spelling. And that’s all that counts, right?
I don’t know. Lately, I’ve begun to wonder about my sage advice. Forexample, the other day I was running spell check on one of mydocuments, beaming with pride upon learning that my masterpiece hadvery few typos. I always correct typos as I make them. But as Ithought more about my great ‘spell check scores’ I realized that I’dcertainly be more efficient blasting through the document with noconcern at all about typos, knowing I could fix them at the end.
Somehow, even though I know that, I can’t do it. I can’t break myselfof the habit of fixing typos as I make them. Which means I’m not anefficient keyboardist, although I am a pretty good speller. Sort ofthe opposite of my kids.
When my kids are my age they’ll type much faster than I do, assumingthat computers even need keyboards for data entry by then. Spellingerrors will be obsolete, along with spell-check. What will matter isdoing things efficiently, which apparently is something that mostcomputer-savvy kids are learning now whether their parents know it ornot.