One thing that I have noticed is that my handwriting and spelling on paper has got a lot worse since auto correction in word processing (and browsers) has become common.
It was never that great to begin with and the last few times I filled out a paper form, my writing and spelling was embarrassingly bad.
I also noticed that when I was teaching previously, there has been a decline with poorer writing and grammar on paper over the years.
Thanks for any comments
I was a terrible speller up until I was probably 30, and I think it was the little red line in web browsers that finally taught me to spell: I don’t LIKE the little red line and I go back to fix a word as soon as it appears. This made me much more aware of spelling, and after enough drill, I finally learned a lot of the words I had never mastered. Spellcheck at the end never had this effect.
What I am getting at is the auto correction makes me lazy and I only have to get close to get the correct spelling
Without that auto correction as a guide, my spelling has gotten worse as I will remember the wrong spelling the auto correcting would otherwise fix.
Definetely. I used to try to spell words correctly but now, I just shoot for the closest construction that the spell-checker can pick up. I can still spell if I have too; I just don’t care as much anymore. It isn’t like spelling in English language is some universal constant. I have spoken English goodly all my life and most of it is arbitrary like the colour grey.
Com se, com sa. I don’t think that it’s spellcheck that has caused a decline in verbal and writing skills, it’s the acceptance of crappy writing and speaking that’s done that.
I blame capitalism, sort of. When good writing skills were required for employment opportunities, people HAD to learn to explain themselves clearly. But the drive to hold down wages, meant tolerating more incompetence.Here , Here!!! That is absolutely right! I have been saying it for years. Got the plebes off the internet!!! We can do it by confiscating their computers and replacing them with Etch-A-Sketches. It is a terrible thing when the semi-illiterate degenerates are free to speak openly. Queen Victoria and Roman Emperor Caligula must be spinning in their grave.
With regards to texting, I believe the language is getting watered down.
I realize the app is programmed for sentence construction, and it will suggest verbs, nouns, subjects, etc.
I will have a sentence in thought, and begin texting. The app will suggest words. I think, well, the suggestion is close to the word I have in mind. And click on it. It is faster.
Then, I think, these are not my eloquent words I am using. And the recipient is denied my style.
I think the answer is to learn how to text like the youngsters do. They can whip out a text.
In all fairness to the youngsters, they have grown up texting and it is natural to them and their nimble fingers makes it easy for them.
No, it’s gotten worse with the proliferation of so much written material by people who would otherwise have never used written language. And whose writing is never subjected to criticism or correction.
In generations past, a majority of people would go for long periods without ever writing anything at all, and rarely reading enough to see what correctly spelled and punctuated composition looked like, so little non-standard writing was visible.
The written language has quickly expanded to the lower half of the literacy spectrum, who are using it beyond the limit of their intellect. Otherwise intelligent people are still writing correctly.
Maybe not on this board, but most people would have missed your pun on the “color gray” comment
Not to mention “definetely”.
And “too” and “goodly”.
It’s not specifically auto-correct, but the internet in general. Back in the old days, you rarely saw a word in print that wasn’t typeset by professionals and passed through at least one proofreader. A typo was an unusual thing; it was rare to find a typo in an entire book. So correct spelling and grammar were ingrained. You just KNEW the difference between “its” and “it’s” because you always saw them used correctly. Now you just as often see them interchanged. I used to be a really excellent speller, but now I find myself questioning words all the time.
The autocorrect on my phone insists on entering words I didn’t intend it to. I’m a good speller, so I constantly have to keep an eye on it and override its “corrections.”
Good one. He obviously meant “defiantly.”
Mine has actually gotten better; I hate going back and correcting all the stuff the auto-check highlights for my attention. My penmanship was never that great; my handwriting looked like my 98 year old grandmothers when I was in my 20s. But I do notice that among my age-mates I am one of the few who still writes letters and notes by hand. Even the people I snail-mail with regular seem to have gone the printer route and only addressing the envelope by hand.
Either Louis or Clark famously spelled “mosquito” fourteen different ways on one page of his journal. I’ve been reading the letters of Alexander Mackenzie, and the dude couldn’t even decide how to spell his own last name.
So no, taking a long view, autocorrect probably hasn’t made spelling any worse.
What autocorrect/spellchecking has done is spread American spellings further, because most people aren’t smart enough (or can’t be arsed) to set it to their country’s version of English.
It used to be that people who weren’t very good at spelling or grammar didn’t write all that much anyway so we never saw it. Most writing we read, novels, newspapers, etc, were by educated professionals who knew their stuff.
When the internet came along we started to see the barriers come down, and everyone could write things for anyone to see, and it appeared as though spelling skills had dropped drastically, but it was an illusion from the different sources - non-professionals writing blogs etc.
I suspect that remains true, but I do think that there probably has been some actual decline in skills like spelling when there are automated fixes for it, but we individuals can’t easily measure that as if those technologies are doing their job well it should actually appear as an improvement from our point of view.
Handwriting, on the other hand, is undoubtedly suffering. But does it matter if we don’t have to hand write all that much anyway?
ETA: speaking of bad writing, I should have proofread this before submitting. Sorry.
I have the same issue and sometimes it makes me a little crazy because I have to override it a few times to get the word I want.
For a long time I assumed that I had lost a lot of spelling ability due to decades of using spell checkers. (I was a Computer Science prof so I started using them fairly early on.) I thought I had been a good spelling in grade/high school, etc.
But then I came across my thesis proposal. One of the last major documents I did without using a spell checker. Egad, it was horrible.
So spell checkers are a good thing for me. They’ve helped me learn to be a better speller.
OTOH, I find auto-correct to to be incredibly unhelpful. Turn it off on everything. (Since I don’t text and rarely use a device with limited keyboard it’s not such a problem.)