Mary Fisher wrote:

'Matter' is a function of where you are and what you are doing .. in
the real world what do you expect a workman digging a hole in the
ground in the 80 deg sun to do? Stop every 5 mins for a wash? So, it
might 'matter' if the observer is inflexible? As mentioned elsewhere,
it's often not just a matter of trying harder .. is just how different
folk 'see' stuff. What if they have a body odour 'problem' no matter
how many times a day they wash / spray / roll .. would you tell them
they stink?


Are you suggesting that someone who can't be bothered to spell is digging a
hole at 80 degrees?

Not wishing to put words in Tim's mouth, but I think he was suggesting
that for some of us, the difficulty we face producing 100% accurately
spelled text in all situations will be comparable to the difficulty said
ditch digger would have remaining perspiration and odour free.

What I'm saying is that they care about how they look but not about how they
communicate. Fine feathers and all that ...

Just a stab in the dark here, but do you put on make-up every time you
go out? Could another woman not turn round and claim that "She speaks
real fancy, but can't be bothered to take care of her appearance". Could
it be just a case of differing priorities?

I do - but it interferes with the communication of the message and it's not
necessary.

Not "necessary" would imply that there was choice involved. If you have
proofread to the best of your ability and checked with the available
tools and there are still errors, how do you suggest one eliminates them?

(in fact treat that as a rhetorical question - the answer obviously
being "post to usenet and some spelling moderator will help you out"!)

I really did believe that spellcheckers were
part of most verbal applications

Not really. Also depending on the style of your errors, some are very
much better than others. The MS ones I find pretty poor as it happens
with my errors, the Mozilla one is worse still. The best ones (for me)
are based on the "Linguibase" by Proximity Technologies which seems to
have an almost clairvoyant ability to extract what I mean from the
nonsense I type ;-), but alas that does not seem to be that popular
these days....


--
Cheers,

John.

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