Ryan writes:

Among many people on the Internet, it is considered uncool to actually
know how to spell. My 2nd grade teacher contacted me by email a while
back. I remember that she did a good job teaching these kinds of
things. I suppose that many people didn't pay much attention in
elementary school.

It's worse than that. I used to be an excellent speller, but reading
Usenet postings has desensitized me to common errors like incorrect use
of it's vs. its. So now I sometimes make the same errors in my writing
and don't catch them because they no longer stand out like a sore thumb
the way they used to.

Sadly, I also see newspapers and magazines with the same errors, as well
as cases where someone clearly picked an entirely wrong word from the
list that their spelling checker presented to them. Computers make
lousy proofreaders because they don't understand what they're
"reading".

Dave