Spell Check! For The Love Of God, Spell Check!
by Jackie Mason on November 5, 2009

Amy Austin | November 5, 2009
Dictionaries shouldn't ever go the way of the dodo, I don't think. Aside from my freakish love of them, they're a pretty standard office fixture, in my experience. (Then again... they do tend to be rather old and/or beat up... hm.)

One thing you can't do with an online dictionary (at least, I haven't tried...) is just cruise and peruse through them. Am I the only one who likes to flip through and look for obscure words at random? Or some good power-reading when bored for a few minutes???

And speaking of... I thought I needed to dig out my Scrabble dictionary for my weekly post-trivia game on Tuesdays, but even the Scrabble dictionary can now be found online -- rejoice! ;-)

Steve West | November 5, 2009
I've come to learn from my keyboard that certain words should be avoided completely. The proximity of the letters "g" and "t" has definitely made me alter my letter closings to not include the word "regards", spell check be damned.

Amy Austin | November 5, 2009
LOL... awesome.
Yeah, nothing like a little pubic humiliation.

Jackie Mason | November 5, 2009
[hidden by author request]

Amy Austin | November 5, 2009
Um, yeah... no dictionary (unless there's some super duper deluxe edition that I'm not aware of!) and... those are pretty much standard rules of the game. (Although I do confess to having been persuaded on a couple of occasions to play with ridiculous shenanigans -- like... swapping tiles between players, for instance -- just for amusement's sake. A difficult thing for a hard-core competitor and Scrabble purist such as myself... but if there are laughs to be had, I'm usually game. ;-) )

Jackie Mason | November 5, 2009
[hidden by author request]

Scott Hardie | December 10, 2009
Scrabble doesn't come with a dictionary, but there is an "official" Scrabble dictionary that includes all words in the English language that are permitted under Scrabble rules, and that are short enough to be spelled with seven tiles in your hand. I used to flip through that book between turns when I was a kid, because my mom would still kick my butt even with the help. (She still does.) Being a Scrabble player means that obscure two-letter words are always fresh in mind, like "et," "fa," "mu," "es," and more.

I have a love-hate relationship with spellchecking software. I don't want to make careless mistakes in my writing any more than anybody does. But just as wearing glasses makes your eyes weaker, using a spellchecker makes you a worse speller, and I've found myself getting sloppy with my writing ever since I activated one at work two years ago. "Thnaks" would end every email if I didn't have it on.