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Thread: Proof, proof, proof

  1. #1
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    Proof, proof, proof

    Mini rant: Not so much on the Creek, but particularly on FaceBook: Do people ever go back and proof what they are writing? And not just responses to a thread, but I have seen the OP write a short question or comment that makes no sense what-so-ever, and is full of grammatical full-on goofs and obvious misspellings that spell check would find. And apparently it is improper to call anyone out on it or you are now the "spelling police". I cringe every time I see a "there" when they meant "their". So I have learned to presume that they are truly spelling challenged or simply don't know how to use the edit or delete tools provided, which is probably not a bad assumption as you almost need to have someone tell you how to find those tools the first time. My strength as an engineer certainly was not the use of the English language, but I learned to proof everything I did, whether it was a report, letter or email. Yet sometimes I go back and read something I wrote previously and wonder, how the heck did I miss that. We are all human.

    And at some point I must have put "i" in my dictionary as an acceptable word. I wish I could figure out how to correct that one...

    OK, I proofed this at least six times, wonder what I missed?
    Last edited by Ole Anderson; 11-26-2017 at 11:51 AM.
    NOW you tell me...

  2. #2
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    Ole, a lot of folks post from SmartPhones and "Autocorrect" quite often does a number on things when folks are typing with their thumbs...and as you note, they rarely read things before hitting "post". And many folks don't realize that one can go back and edit out errors, too...
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    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  3. #3
    For most, it's no longer important, and that's a shame.
    It does not bother me in the least when someone gets upset when I point out their spelling errors. Language is important....be better.

  4. #4
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    Ole: Since you ask what you missed, I'll bring it to your attention.

    You say, "My strengths as an engineer certainly was not". Your subject and verb do not agree. You can either say, "my strength as an engineer certainly was not", or "my strengths as an engineer certainly were not".

    Grant
    Ottawa ON

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    idon'tknoitlokspretygodtome
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  6. #6
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    Good luck with changing that! Some people just don't care as long as their general idea or question gets through. Some people post from a phone with fat fingers and never seem to review. Some don't use a spell checker because it is annoying and they can't spell anyway. Some may not have English as a native language. Many may consider excellence in woodworking more importanter than excellence in communication.

    Many are truely challenged with spelling, including me. A bit of dyslexia doesn't help things. I will spell some words wrong even after years of watching the spell checker correct them. I rely on the spell checker and always glance back over the message before I post unless the house is suddenly on fire. But as inferred by Grant's note, all humans make mistakes. I try to read everything I write carefully but still miss some errors. I especially look for combinations such as "your/you're", "there/their", "waste/waist", and "to/too" and for sentencences I started to edit then got distracted.

    The ephemeral nature nature of some quick posts makes proofing seem a little less important.

    My Android phone has a feature for removing words I added to my dictionary. Such tools are browser and word processor specific. For example, I searched with google for "editing spell checker word firefox" and it gave me some instructions.

    Speaking of FaceBook, I used it for a few years then quit. Useful on occasion but overall a huge waste of time (See, an incomplete sentence, right out there in public!)

    JKJ

  7. #7
    There is a free app called Grammarly that will do spell check and grammar fixes.
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  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grant Wilkinson View Post
    Ole: Since you ask what you missed, I'll bring it to your attention.

    You say, "My strengths as an engineer certainly was not". Your subject and verb do not agree. You can either say, "my strength as an engineer certainly was not", or "my strengths as an engineer certainly were not".

    I wish I could say I intentionally left a kernel for someone to find. Thanks, went back and corrected it. Lots of my corrections happen after something is posted.
    NOW you tell me...

  9. #9
    What really drive me nuts is the media. They make more mistakes then the General population. Almost every news article I read has spelling mistakes.
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  10. #10
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    It is possible to edit a Facebook post? Please tell me more.

    Proofing what is typed is old school for me. At one time my employment was in the printing trades. One old story is about the time we were filming a customer's artwork for a job. I mentioned to the production manager that one of the words didn't look right to me. At the time my spelling ability was atrocious*. He said the customer spelled it that way so it must be right. After we started printing the customer looked at it and was in shock that there was a misspelled word in the art.

    During my high school years one teacher was especially verbose in the comments on my paper about how I misspelled the same word three different ways. My spelling has improved greatly over the years. My thanks for that go to a person who used to argue with me over our political choices. Often his only counter to my argument was that my spelling was off. As there are many well educated folks who say absolutely nothing worth the time of listening, there are as many less educated who can make brilliant statements with perhaps a bit less flair and polish. My response was to remove that avenue of the misspelled words argument from his arsenal.

    jtk

    *I may not have know how to spell it right, but if it looks wrong, it usually is.
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  11. #11
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    In my opinion autocorrect causes more problems than it fixes.

  12. #12
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    Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Nair View Post
    Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.
    Thanks Roger, I will have to give that a try on my next typo.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Nair View Post
    Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.
    The depressing part is the huge percentage of people who think it works like text or email, resulting in an incorrect post, followed by a reply correcting it (usually with mistakes of its own), lather-rinse-repeat. You can even delete a post on FB, which apparently comes as a surprise to people who put a post on the wrong friend's page, then post an "oops, sorry" reply. The fact that the default setting is "return equals send" doesn't help a bit.

    (My main beef with FB is the inability to do bold/underline/italic without dubious third-party apps, but that's another subject entirely.)
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    Now that I am retired, I do more and more reading of books than I ever did. I notice that some authors either can't spell or their proof readers/ editors need to go back to school. I find numerous misspellings and wrong use of words in the novels I read. I've even found books with duplicate pages.
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