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From: ken@rochester.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,misc.misc
Subject: Re: Literacy was: smail pronounciation
Message-ID: <25431@rochester.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 1-Mar-87 12:48:55 EST
Article-I.D.: rocheste.25431
Posted: Sun Mar  1 12:48:55 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Mar-87 20:34:26 EST
References: <667@rtech.UUCP> <1074@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <486@sw1e.UUCP> <25361@rochester.ARPA> <5629@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@rochester.UUCP (SKY)
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
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Xref: utgpu comp.sources.d:392 misc.misc:635

|(Apologies for the lack of an edh.  `\' is a poor substitute.  The
|point, however, is that spelling is largely a matter of agreement.)

Exactly. We agree on using any of the standard dictionaries, I
suppose?  Note that I am not referring to differences like
sulphur/sulfur or honor/honour or little typos that creep in, but
persistent, uniform errors, like "here, here" for "hear, hear" (Ed, you
intended to put a :-) in, right?), or "you will loose your files". I can
imagine, in time, a new myth for the origin of the phrase "here, here"
will be invented.

Personally these errors don't bother me at all when they appear on the
net. After all the information here is transient, right? But when
errors creep into an editorial of Potentials, the IEEE student
magazine, then I begin to wonder.

You may say, why bother with spelling, as long as the reader can figure
out what one is trying to say. The point is that the medium should not
detract from the message.  A spelling error has the same effect on me
that a smudge of ink on the page has, it makes me pause, even
momentarily.  I don't want to beat people over the head and sound like
an elitist but if somebody hands me an essay full of smears, my
impression will be that the person doesn't care much about the message
conveyed.

I have redirected followups to sci.lang.

	Ken