I am a pretty good speller and I use spell check whenever I can. I installed a spellchecker (which I am being told is a misspelling) for posts to forums. I often see people who are bad spellers yet clearly have not used a spellcheck on their emails. This surprises me - if you cannot spell very well, why not take advantage of technology to help?
So, what are you? And if you are a poor speller but do not use spellcheck, why?
I am not going to put lots of intermediate options in this poll - trying to differentiate shades of gray doesn’t help.
I’m good at spelling and rarely deliberately use spellcheck. I do read what I’ve written to make sure everything is correct, though. Spellcheck does not help when the word you’ve used is spelled correctly, but still wrong (their/there, phase/faze). If I’m not sure how to spell a word I’ll look it up.
I can spell just about anything if I think about it, or take a little time. But I am a lousy hunt n’ peck typist, have to look at the keyboard to type, and said keyboard is old and temperamental. Spellcheck flags my frequent typing screw-ups, it’s a giant time saver more than anything.
Because I avoid words I don’t know how to spell, the only mistakes I make are through rushing my typing or my reviewing. And I don’t use spellcheck. Go, me!
I’m a decent speller and I rarely use spell check, but If I’m unsure of a spelling I look it up. I have this probably irrational concern that if I don’t use my spelling skills I’ll lose them, so I don’t rely on spell check.
I’m a very good speller and don’t go out of my way to use spellcheck, but I do take a look at words that my browser puts red lines under to make sure I wanted to say that. Seriously, spellcheck? That’s how you spell that, Firefox.
I use spellchecker when I’m writing in British English, as my usual dialectal variation is American English. But I don’t trust it: if something looks off, I check other sources.
I am a poor speller, and I keep my dictionary in arms reach. I don’t use spell check - I can’t seem to change the dictionary over to Canadian spellings so it is forever telling me that ‘colour’ is spelled incorrectly.
It also chokes on many foreign terms and musical terms that, while not standard English, are in fact the correct spelling of the generally accepted term. (‘Accellerando’, ‘berceuse’, ‘ritardando’ are all in the Concise Oxford, and yet they all have little red lines under them as I type this.) When a brand name like Sony or Yamaha doesn’t get a red line, that tells me that this spell check dictionary is not a good match for me.
I’m an excellent speller, but sloppy typist. I think my fingers are dyslexic. Pretty much every program I use at work or home does the “auto-spellcheck-as-you-type” thing that will point out my typos to me; I counted that as “use spellcheck.”
Similar to DCnDC. I am an excellent speller but make typing errors sometimes; if the program includes automatic spell check, I look at the words it’s highlighted.
I don’t use spellcheck. If I make a typing error I’m generally still using a valid word (typing think instead of thing or using can when I really mean can’t) so it’s not helpful there and most of the words I use where spellcheck may be useful (medical terms) it’s wrong 90% of the time anyway.
Spellcheck is completely useless to me. I’m a very good speller, use Google if I’m unsure of something, and I’m a very good typist, so I do pretty well.
I’m a good speller (though my typing here is full of typos, a consequence, I aver, of my never giving what I do here my entire attention). I don’t use the check-as-you-go spellchecker, as I find it annoying. I begin my proofreading process with the spellchecker built into Word, but that is only the first step, as Microsoft’s choice of what words to put into their lexicon is frequently idiotic.
