The Plague of Bork’d Spellcheckers
There is a certain level of expectations that people put in our journalists and newspaper editors. One of those expectations is that these people are versed in the language they’re communicating in. In this case, the language of choice would be English. However, it seems that this one expectation isn’t met on a continual basis in the drive to be the first to get a news story out. Gone are the days when an editor would meticulously pour over every word to ensure that what got printed was pure gold. In the age of 24-hour news coverage and internet newspapers, there seems to be little interest in preserving this one tradition. Instead, the editors are slacking and instead relying on the average reader to spot the errors and use the handy “Report typo or correction” link. Right in each article, they are admitting their own journalistic ineptitude by being audacious by admitting they’re too lethargic to spot their own errors before they make a story available for the reader at large.
Another fine example I have to demonstrate the disregard for the English language is this from a screen cap I took while playing Age of Conan. The quest was to get the skins from different corrupted creatures and return the skin to the NPC who can’t tell a hole in a donught from one in his ass, but for some reason, has been standing around all this time waiting for me to come to get him these skins. So, the first part of the quest went fine. Whe I went to redeem the quest, on my way into Old Tarantia, I glanced up to check my mini-map in the upper left hand corner of my screen and I noticed the quest outline next to it and the spelling error. Pray tell, what is a ‘Wolerine’?  Was it perhaps supposed to be a “Wolverine”?
It’s obvious that whoever was spelling checking this was either drugged up on something or their spellchecker was bork’d. In either case… you can always refer to your paper source and look up a word the old fashion way. With a dictionary! I still have a dictionary on my desk. It’s far superior to the dictionaries I can find online because I don’t have to wait for a search engine to do its search. I can find what I need and a nice concise definition. I love my Oxford Dictionary of Current English; I’ve used it since high school and it’s served me well. A spellchecker can never truly replace the paper dictionary or core knowledge of the language in which one is writing.
Stumble It!
December 9th, 2008 at 10:33 am
“Gone are the days when an editor would meticulously pour over every word to ensure that what got printed was pure gold.”
Being pedantic myself, I believe you meant “pore over every word”. Spellcheckers won’t spot incorrect homonyms in any event – there’s no substitute for the trained eye and literate brain.