Disclaimer: This post has absolutely nothing to do with the outdoors!
I grew up in a family that obsessively corrected ever miss spelled word and grammar error I ever wrote or spoke. I am grateful that I was raised in a family that cared enough about my education to put in the effort to teach me the correct way to read, write, and speak. It influenced me later in life when I finally chose my major in college as a Bachelor's of Science in Human Communication. The well established background gave me a advantage in all of my public speaking classes as well as researching and writing a copious amount of papers.
I find myself as a college graduate and, what I consider, a moderately well educated person still having people correct what they interpret are miss spelled words or grammar mistakes. This really annoys me! I can understand the assumption that a young kid has spelled a word incorrectly out of error. However, one should not assume that all words spelled untrue to traditional form are in error. We live in a free thinking world, or at least some of us like to think that we do, so why should we forcibly conform our use of language. Its barbaric. In the art world its an insult to trifle an artist expression even if it is outside the traditional realm of art, but somehow it is okay to presumably correct someone's self expression through words. If I so choose to spell a word a certain way or not put a comma in my sentence or string multiple sentences together without the traditional means of punctuation's who cares?
Personally, I think that there are much bigger issues in this world then if I used affect when I should have used effect or since instead of sense or just simply didn't feel the need to go back and change the fact that i didn't capitalize my i or put in that letter I left out of a word. I will give all due respect to the english language and there are situations where I believe sentence structure and spelling should comply to a traditional form. But in the end it is a language that is ever evolving. And, so what if the traditional rules are slowly falling off. If they are falling by the wayside it just means that we don't need them anymore because the are out dated and superfluous. Some might say, we have to draw the line somewhere or it will be anarchy. This is not a gateway drug situation. The world is not going to fall out of orbit and were not all going to die if I don't spell every word the way it is in the dictionary. Stupid Webster anyways!
None of this is to say that I disagree with the proper education of language, speaking, spelling, and grammar. But at some point do not just automatically jump to the conclusion that someone has made a mistake, and then feel the need to jump in and prove how much smarter then them you are. And, even if it causes major issues for you emotionally, mentally, and physically allow nontraditional thinking and expression to happen.
New River Websites
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In the last week there have been a few new river related websites to
pop-up. Here they are:
Salmon River Trips - SalmonRiverTrips.net : Information about r...
11 years ago
Well put Travis, I completely agree with you one this one. Although I am on of the worst spellers in history and vary rarely see the need to fix my spelling in most situations because the first and last letter are correct and the point I am trying to make is still clear, there are plenty of times when I use that wonderful F7 key that spellchecks my work for me. I have come to find that I should learn to spell better or at least re-read my work because it makes my paper sometimes even more confusing by substituting the wrong words for me. You should write a Caldwellien dictionary, that has blank pages in the back for new words.
ReplyDeletesincerly,
Shale