Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed that my spelling has gotten progressively worse. As a former class champion (8th grade), this is distressing to me. I look at the word on screen, and know it doesn’t look right, but can’t figure out why. Is this a normal factor of age (I’m 60)? Am I doomed to eventually writing the unreadable? Am I even in the right forum?
I blame spellcheck.
What a drag it is getting old: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301006.x
Hey! I’ve notice the same thing. I can write a long email… proof read it… make changes… proof read it again… and then send it and BCC myself. When I get the copy I find spelling errors, missing words, you name it. Now it looked perfect when I sent it so who changed it? How did “their” suddenly become “there”?
My WAG is that as we get older we are able to overlook our mistakes and our minds fill in the missing words. It’s not until we see the final version after the fact that we see all of the problems.
When I was in high school we used typewriters to do term papers. One trick a teacher taught me was to read what I had written backwards. Somehow reading it backwards forces you to look at each word by itself and increases the chance of picking up spelling errors. This is long before spell checker… and it worked through college. Now a days we have spell checker and rely on it to find any problems… unfortunately, spell checker doesn’t catch a lot of grammatical errors.
IANEAWHB, but, considering a fairly rapid onset (~1 year) it could be indicative of a medical condition.
In my own life, I have found that increased stress and other psychological factors have made me both more critical of my shortcomings and less adroit at speech related tasks.
I’d second the curse of spell check too.
Welcome to the wonderful world of advancing age. 
Terrific. I’ll be a babbling, drooling fool in no time.
One time I got the flu when I was in 6th grade, and for a couple of weeks afterward, I forgot how to spell a bunch of words.
I agree with beowulff. I never use spellcheck. My spelling has improved in the past few years. I was a terrible speller when I was younger.
I will be 62 in June.
Don’t feel too bad. I’ll be talking along and suddenly the word I was about to say won’t be there anymore - it’s just gone from my brain. Fortunately, I can usually come up with a reasonable substitute, but still. . .
I do better writing (I hope so, I’m a tech writer), but I still miss silly stuff when I’m writing.
Yew wil bea?
I am 79 and never use spell check. I hate to read email that has a myriad of misspelled words.
Maybe you were just going through a bad spell. 
I’m noticing this in myself, but I think I’ve pinpointed a cause: as my typing skills increase, I type faster. Problem is, my fingers aren’t necessarily more accurate; they’re just moving faster. After a while, my accuracy will catch up to my speed – and then I’ll start typing a little faster, and the whole cycle will start again. I’m teaching myself guitar (with a DVD), and I’m noticing the same thing – I’m able to play scales more quickly, but my precision stinks. When I get that licked, I’ll play a little faster – and woosh down the hill goes my intonation.
I’m 62, and used to be a DAMN good speller. Always won the spelling bees in grade school.
I think there’s been a fundamental change since desktop publishing and the internet took over. Previously, typesetting was done by professionals and always proofread. If you saw a word in print, it was rarely spelled incorrectly. Correct spelling was ingrained into our consciousness, and there was nothing competing with it. I know that, at least in my case, I “visualize” words in my mind’s eye, and if I’ve always seen a word spelled correctly, there’s no problem.
Well, now there’s desktop publishing and, much worse, the internet. Our minds are bombarded with “alternate” spellings that we never used to see in print. The old ingrained spellings have now been compromised, and our brains are confused. Plus the fact that, for most of us, we don’t read actual books as much as we used to, so much of what we do read is unprofessional and un-proofread.
I’m sure the aging process has something to do with it, but I’m also sure that the primary reason is that we’re reading un-proofread type, created by anyone with the ability to generate it.
Sez u.
I very much doubt this has to do with age. Rather, it’s a matter of lack of practice and too little time. Even for young people like me, proofing your own work immediately is very, very hard. Your brain just glosses over the text.
Heh. I’m 43, and just took part (for the second year in a row) in a community adult spelling bee. My team tied for third! Haven’t noticed any day-to-day dropoff in my spelling skills yet, fortunately.