At Least Give Your Spell-Check a Fighting Chance to Save You

If you don't read, you don't see words.

Which means you probably can't spell.

Take this recent rant that an angry constituent wrote to a politician:

You are not responding with an answer just the same rederick.

Rederick? ... Oh, he meant rhetoric.

He had heard he word, probably while watching some diction-challenged bloviator on cable television.

He understood, to some degree, the proper context.

But he obviously isn't much of a reader.

When Mose taught journalism in the college classroom, he once had a student use the word tornato, which almost looks likes tomato, but she intended tornado.

She knew the word because she had heard it. She could use the word in conversation. But she couldn't spell it.

Spell-check will save you? Don't count on it. Mose's program figured out that tornato was supposed to be tornado, but it didn't have a clue with rederick.

Want to write well? Read good writing.

It's also a good way to learn spelling.