Is Typing Ruining Your Ability To Spell? 494
NSN A392-99-964-5927 writes "My handwriting abilities have deteriorated over the years. Putting a real pen to paper, I get frustrated over how to spell correctly, as I am so accustomed to using a keyboard and knowing where the letters are. Having spoken to a few friends, I've found that this has become apparent to them, too. I've noticed that my grammar is also affected; maybe this is because I spent too much time on IRC and lowered my standards. Hand-written words are now becoming obsolete. There is often no need to think about writing anymore, or about how something is spelled. Are other Slashdotters having the same problem? (I'm used to Telex machines, which should give you an indication of how old I am.)"
I don't know, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
...using a spelling-correcting keyboard has made my typing skills deteriorate noticeably. It's especially noticeable when I'm trying to use vi.
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I rarely write anything these days and it's often just a scrawl when I do. My writing was never up to much anyway, without practice it's deteriorated.
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Re:I don't know, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I even have difficulty signing my name sometimes, but that's mostly because cursive is my most unpracticed form.
You obviously don't sign your name that much then.
:)
My signature used to look like a vaguely "signaturey" version of my handwriting. At some stage- I think it was around 10 years ago when I had to sign things a lot as part of my job- it became detached from my handwriting and got more and more stylised.
Nowadays it's bordering on a meaningless squiggle; only the first letter is remotely legible. I can still see parts of it, but that's mainly because I know my own name and know what it's meant to be.
Its only *real* value- and the only intended one!- is that it looks like my other meaningless signature squiggles.
But back to the point- my signature has very little to do with my (not bad) handwriting these days. (^_^)
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"Your meaningless squiggles are my ticket to wealth. I love forging checks and you "squiggle people" make it so easy." - Mr. Scam Artist
I keep my signature as close to the original letters my teacher taught me. Therefore it looks virtually identical to my signature from 20 years ago when I first signed my SSI card. It's also harder to forge since any deviation would be immediately noticeable as "not me".
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Agreed. I worked in a group email response department and spent the majority of my day writing emails. Writing emails all day greatly improved my ability to bang out very long, concise and grammatically correct emails over and over.
My handwriting has withered into a scratch that even I myself cannot read on some days. I recently returned to college and found myself desiring better note taking skills, but my penmanship is just too poor that I have resorted to taping lectures.
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:5, Funny)
capitalization is especially important - consider the sentence:
i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a serial comma fanatic:
To my parents, Anne Rand and God.
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When programming in lisp (a programming language (something that can be compiled into machine code) where syntax (rules for writing (typing) commands) is based (fundamental idea) on parentheses ( ( ( left parenthesis) and ) ( right parenthesis) ) ) one can fall into the habit of using ( and ) (parentheses) in excess (too much (surplus)), though this is another problem (the issue discussed (may be it (the use of parentheses in excess) should not be mentioned here(the discussion of spelling).
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Next time, try to pick it down from the shelf first. Much easier.
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I never, ever use a spell-checker. Be it in Dutch, German, English or Scandinavian, I'll always consult an old-fashioned dictionary if I don't know how to spell a particular word.
But ultimately when it comes to spelling, grammar and general eloquence, there's simply no substitute for erudition. An erudite individual will have a better grasp of language.
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An erudite individual will have a better grasp of language.
And pretty soon nobody else will know what he's saying :p
I usually use google's define: function when I want to check the meaning or spelling of a word.
As for the article, I don't see why typing would ruin the ability to spell. It means that when it comes to writing for the first time in a while it feels pretty weird, and easy to cramp up if you're going to do a lot of writing.. but why would it stop your ability to spell?
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An erudite individual will have a better grasp of language.
They are also adept at casting magical spells [everquest2.com], or so I'm told.
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That's why I've always maintained correct/proper capitalization and grammar and compete sentences, even in IMs and IRC chats. In fact, it actually slows me down when I have to purposely corrupt a text message in order to reduce its size (such as on Twitter or SMS).
I've never been much good at spelling/punctuation/grammar... Which is especially shameful because I really enjoy reading and have an ex-English teacher for a mother...
But I still try to maintain correct capitalization, grammar, spelling, etc. in anything where I've got a chance to actually think about what I'm writing. Forum posts, documentation, email... Anything like that.
IMs and IRC I don't worry so much about.
My handwriting has always been crap. I never really learned cursive, always printed instead
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Same here, it riles me up when people are too lazy to write things right, especially when I know these are educated people. There is no excuse for MBAs and PhDs to send me emails full of spelling and grammar errors, it means they are too lazy/stupid/whatever to figure out how to turn on the spell checker.
Casual messaging? sure, who cares? But in business communications? Absolutely unacceptable.
It is so bad that we have a standing order at our shop to never type customer-provided content. 100% cut-and-paste
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I haven't encountered any spelling or grammar problems myself, but the handwriting has gone completely bonkers, but it has never been any good.
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I haven't encountered any spelling or grammar problems myself, but the handwriting has gone completely bonkers, but it has never been any good.
And I've noticed the opposite....my hand-writing has gotten much better because I'm more careful now, since I don't use it very much at all.
As far as spelling goes, how can you not learn to spell more correctly, as auto-correcting features SHOW you how to correctly spell what you're trying to spell?
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I know my hand starts to hurt if I have to write more than a couple of paragraphs by hand.
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I'm one of those people that refuses to sacrifice proper English when I Tweet or text. If I'm running out of space, I'll start by doing number words to numbers (eg, "1" instead of "one"), and "and"s to
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It automatically changes vi to vim?
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No, that would be up to ln -s /usr/bin/vim /usr/bin/vi.
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This whole topic doesn't make much sense to me. A word is spelled the same way, whether you're writing it or typing it; a properly phrases sentence doesn't change based on the medium in which it is written.
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Typing is muscle memory just like playing music. Guitarists don't consciously think "E-G-A-E-G-B/A-E-G-E-E-G" any more than a typist thinks "s-m-o-k-e- -o-n- -t-h-e- -w-a-t-e-r". (Well, bassists might but we're known to be pretty dense.)
I actually had trouble typing the hyphenated parts as my hands initially would spell out the whole words.
Have you never had a case where your fingers know your password but you don't? Happens to me all the time.
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My fingers know the password to my sperm bank.
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I can't spell but it doesn't matter....Google knows what I meant!
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe he's using one of those hackable Mac keyboard with all the spare storage and processing?
FingerWorks TouchStream (Score:5, Informative)
It's a multitouch keyboard that does dynamic spelling correction based on what you've already typed, what you type next (it issues backspaces to correct prior keystrokes), and the fractional location of a finger-tap within or between key areas. It's slick beyond words. Apple bought the tech, and is ever-so-slowly dribbling it out in their iPhone/iPod Touch and trackpads.
Re:FingerWorks TouchStream (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I would stab that keyboard in short order. Unless it knows unix commands, of course.
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u r untitled to ur opinum but my spellin is a gd as evr!!!!1
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The OP didn't say he relies on spellcheck, but that his fingers know how to spell when his head doesn't.
I've got the same problem. Words like receive are no problem when I'm typing, but if I put pen to paper, I need to stop and think. When many people type, they think the word, not the letter. Their hands put the words from thought to type with no intermediate thought needed.
I spell by muscle memory, not thought. I'm sure the same works for people who write all the time. The pen just makes the words they ne
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Yse (Score:2, Funny)
Tpying ahs runed my ablty.
No, but (Score:5, Funny)
it's ruining my ability to finish a
Not just spelling ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Hah, yeah. Though I don't mind that so much. My only grade less than an A throughout my K-12 years was a B in handwriting.
What ability to spell? (Score:3, Funny)
You have to be kidding me. Where would this network be today if I could spell?
http://rs79.vrx.net/works/usenet/alt.sex/ [vrx.net]
http://rs79.vrx.net/works/usenet/terms/froup/ [vrx.net]
Absolutely! (Score:2)
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Was that intended as a joke? Otherwise it appears that you can't spell "affected"!
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I know what you mean. Since the introduction of chip 'n pin credit cards I don't even have to sign my name any more. In fact there are only two reasons I ever pick up a pen now. 1) To write a birthday/xmas/greeting card for someone and I really have to concentrate to make sure its legible. 2) If I go to a seminar and want to scratch a few memory joggers in a notebook. Typically you have to write quickly when doing that, and it looks atrocious. I don't think I'm too bad with my spelling though.
The la
Well, that and the age and alchohol (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think it has been a problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Spelling, also, seems to be ok. Because I can't quite trust automatic spell checks, I still find that making spelling mistakes carries a small cost in time and annoyance. However, my spelling mistakes do annoy me a great deal more when I am writing; because I don't have an easy way to look up corrected spellings and corrections tend to be messy.
As for "writing" more broadly, I've not found any reason to think that computers reduce the need for that. Until we come up with an interface that allows me to dump mental state directly to the machine, and shove that around, writing will still be the only real option for expressing complex ideas in a reasonably precise and concise manner.
Re:I don't think it has been a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Abuse of parenthetical comments? Like having nested parenthetical comments that make reading the original difficult? I do that too.
The recommended solution is the use of footnotes[1], since somebody can jump down to them, read them, then jump back up and easily reread the whole sentence ignoring them[2].
[1] Like this.
[2] Further footnotes allow nesting without any difficulties[3] such as avoiding parentheses mismatch.
[3] That said, nested footnotes should be use sparingly[4], as with too many layers it can be hard to reverse back up the stack.
[4] And recursive footnotes should never be used[4].
[5] Unreferenced footnotes are also something to avoid.
Re:I don't think it has been a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
[4] And recursive footnotes should never be used[4].
At least it's a tail-recursive footnote[1], so a good brain will just infinite loop, rather than overflowing the stack.
[1] Unlike a non-tail-recursive footnote[1] would look like this one.
Re:I don't think it has been a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Unreferenced footnotes aren't the worst[6] thing you could do.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Typing has definitely reduced my ability to hand write quickly and legibly, but not my ability to spell. I think spelling has been affected more by the fact that I write much less now than a long time ago.
My hand hurts (Score:2, Funny)
I find my spelling has actually improved over time (Score:3, Insightful)
My problem is even now that my spelling is better I still have no confidence in my ability to spell when I don't have that safety net.
Re:I find my spelling has actually improved over t (Score:5, Informative)
Your problem isn't that it's rote memorization -- I'm terrible at anything requiring rote memorization. Your problem (and a lot of other peoples') is you don't read enough books. I urge you and everyone else to acquaint yourselves with you local public library, or if you're in college, its library.
Readaholics never have trouble with spelling, unless all they read is the internet.
I'm getting better. (Score:5, Interesting)
My IM client (pidgin) underlines misspelled words in red, as does firefox, so I've found that my spelling has actually been getting better. I tend to actually learn the correct spelling over time.
Your Jealous (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're problem is their are people out they're who got better grammer then ewe and your just jealous.
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I get and appreciate the joke but was this sentence incredibly difficult for anyone else to read, or am I just that much of a grammar nazi?
It's not the typing (Score:5, Informative)
It's a lot of things, but not typing. Of course, tyling produces typoos, but that's not a matter of spelling, it's a matter of hitting the worng keys. A little proofreading fixes that.
Spill chuckers oar bad four spilling. Eye wish pee pull wood stoop ewe sing them.
Personally, when I see someone using the wrong homonym, like "the ball is in there court", it has a negative effect on my opinion of their intelligence. The same goes for the misuse of apostrophes; WHY do people think you need an apostrophe for a plural? Sometimes I'll reply with a link to the Bob the Angry Flower cartoon "Bob's quick giude to the apostrophe, you idiots" [angryflower.com].
Maybe it's being innundated by posts from sub-adults who are texting in class instead of paying attention to the teacher.
2 L8, brb
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it's homophone, not homonym (things that sound the same, not things that are named the same).
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I'm not a homophone! Some of my best friends sound the same!
Things like L8 are particularly bad because they don't translate. Someone whose second language is English will read that as L and then whatever their language's word for 8 is. Other, similar, shorthands rely on phonetic English and so are very difficult for people who are not native speakers and are accustomed to different phonetics.
I recently had a good example of this in the other direction. Someone on an open source project I work on wo
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Personally, when I see someone using the wrong homonym, like "the ball is in there court", it has a negative effect on my opinion of their intelligence.
It shouldn't, though. Well, okay, systematic misuse of homonyms is one thing. On the other hand, while I tend to have decent spelling and grammar, without a doubt the most common errors I make are homonym or near-homonym substitutions. These include their/they're/there, where/wear, and a whole host of others. And make no mistake, I know full well how to
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Whoops, obviously I meant homophone, not homonym. Thanks a lot, OP. :)
Re:It's not the typing (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've also resorted to Bob the Angry Flower, and even wrote a perl script that will silently fix many things I read on IRC and HTTP, so that I don't go insane.
Typoxy: typo correction by proxy (sample image) [halley.cc]
Typoxy: typo correction by proxy (perl script) [halley.cc] Typoxy: typo correction by proxy (starter ~/.typo file) [halley.cc]
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Sometimes I'll reply with a link to the Bob the Angry Flower cartoon "Bob's quick giude to the apostrophe, you idiot's" [angryflower.com].
There, fixed that for ya!
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The same goes' for the misuse of apostrophe's ...
There, wronged it for ya.
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Although rare, sometimes you do need an apostrophe for plural. As in, "Mind your P's and Q's."
I find typing with automatic spell-checkers has improved my ability to spell, and I would've thunk other people felt the same way.
Bad grammar don't bother me none. Writing/speaking is about communicating with an audience. It seems the english language is way more nuanced than it needs to be to fulfill this function. The internet and the virtually unlimited networking it provides seems like the perfect ingredient
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Yesterday, cleaning out the back room, I stumbled across an old photo album my partner had never seen. I told her how much I hated my grade 4 year. I didn't know it at the time, but I was forced to write with a pen for the first time during the Arab Oil Embargo. For me, it was the elementary school classroom pencil and eraser embargo.
The attractive Ms Pinder also wanted me to adopt a cursive script. I had a form of written dyslexia: letters from any word that might complete my sentence would jump the qu
Terrible (Score:2)
Spelling? (Score:4, Interesting)
My handwriting has gone to crap, but what does that have to do with spelling? If anything, I would think that spelling would be more likely to improve, thanks to the slower pace of writing by hand. I pay more attention to what I am writing when I have to take the time to write it out by hand.
If the quality of your writing is going down, I suspect that has to do with the quality of the writing you are consuming.
No (Score:2)
Handwriting vs. typing has nothing to do with grammar and spelling. Just read from quality sources and write or type with proper grammar and spelling. If you spend most of your time reading Twitter the quality of your grammar and spelling will drop whether you handwrite or type. When I was a kid we were told to read the NY Times to improve our vocabulary and grammar.
PINs and other codes (Score:2)
Not quite what you think ... (Score:2)
I'm a pretty decent touch typist, about 300 characters per minute. My spelling and grammar are quite good, even in my second language (English).
Putting pen to paper however, does give me the same effect that you're having, but not quite as you describe it. It's not that I suddenly don't know how to write certain words - it's just that I'm used to writing them at 300 characters per minute, but using a pen I can probably only do 60. In other words, I have to slow down my thinking.
This results in badly spelled
So? (Score:2)
If you need to have good handwriting to earn a living you a probably working for a greeting card company doing the inserts.
For everyone else... It is just faster and more economical to type.
Yes, with the advent of the auto-spell checker, you don't have to often memorize certain spellings but in a business environments where deadlines are looming, do you need to whip out a dictionary every time you need to write an email?
For a car analogy, think of how people who never learned how to use a manual and only dr
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Sadly, I re-read my first sentence and feel a sense of irony creeping in. That said... No one pays me to post on slashdot so it really doesn't matter.
Is this a confession? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the point of this confession or whatever it seems to be? Do you want my attention? Do you want me to agree with you? I don't... I've been typing and using the interwebz for about 14 years now with plenty of IRC, 1337 speak, and degenerate behavior --- and in all that I have maintained my cognitive capacity to recognize the difference between the variants and the proper.
I think your problem (if you feel there is any, such as an employer wondering why you write like a 12 year old), probably stems from the lack of regard for your variance as 'variance', and embracing that way too often, if not completely, as a way of life.
In excess, nearly anything can be problematic. Maintain a balance between work and play; in this case having a deliberate regard for maintaining both your interwebz-bs-style and your proper-for-work-and-standards style.
What I mean is... you need to actually give a shit about what you're doing. Degenerate yourself for fun, but not for habit.
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Very insightful post, and by far the most insightful comment I've read today. But you missed a crucial point:
you need to actually give a shit about what you're doing.
If he actually gave a shit, he wouldn't be bitching and moaning about his decadence and instead, well, be doing something about it. The fact that this appears on Ask Slashdot means that this guy doesn't give a rat's ass, and only is trying to figure out what to point his finger at when his inability to create complete sentences or spell bites him in the ass.
No (Score:2)
Telex? I missed the reference. (Score:2)
Could someone explain how "Telex machines" date the submitter? Wikipedia isn't much help [wikipedia.org] on this.
Thanks!
handwriting is painful... (Score:2)
I rarely hand-write anything anymore, and find that although I can type over 80wpm, I can barely hand-scratch an illegible paragraph without significant hand pain. My writing quality - and even my signature - has gone downhill over the last 10 years to the point where it's almost useless.
What I think is now putting it over the edge is that I broke my thumb, and although it's now healed, it's painful to properly grip a pen. In the old days, forcing myself to write would have probably been enough physio the
google is ruining my ability to spell (Score:2)
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Schools still in the dark ages (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about where you live, but the school curriculums I see are not doing nearly enough to prepare our kids for a lifetime of typed communication, which they surely face. Penmanship, while still important, is the only way kids are being taught in most schools. It's time to teach kids to be proficient typists and spellers using keyboards to at least the same extent as old fashioned written communication.
Great, but who cares? (Score:2)
Script, Block and Type (Score:2)
Typing is much faster than writing, but I find that typing all day does not affect my ability to spell when writing by hand. In fact, because hand-writing is more permanent (there is no backspace), I find its slower pace actually improves the way I write, for I have to spend more time thinking rather than just typing and correcting.
No doubt others will be in a similar position when I say that my script writing (cursive) looks terrible, but that is merely a lack of practice. Bad script is not a modern inv
It's not typing... (Score:2)
Being sloppy and not paying attention to spelling has reduced your ability to spell.
Typing something versus writing it with a pen is no excuse for bad grammar and spelling.
If this really worries you, how about spelling things properly when you're typing? The world will thank you.
Perhaps (Score:2)
My handwriting has ALWAYS been crap (Score:2)
and I've had the opposite experience of the OP. Word processing has increased my typing speed by 50% over typewriters. (I type with three or four fingers at 60wpm, too fast to consider learning the right way.) I've become a better speller because I get instant feedback when I screw up. I've learned not to use 'white out' on the screen. Grammar? Nothing is going to help you if you can't get your words in the right places or understand to use a plural verb after a conditional. SURELY you don't rely on 'gramma
Yes (Score:2)
Just like IDEs have ruined people's ability to write syntactically correct code.
Same boat (Score:2)
I don't consider myself "old", but I'm 30 and from the time I started Junior High through college all my reports had to be typed and saved on a floppy (lol), by my Senior year of High School everything needed to be saved on a zip and by College I was taking my class notes on my laptop just to save time and it was easier to do a "find" in a word document that sift through actual paper notebooks.
My career choices didn't help being in the creative industry for 10 years now where I spend all day long creating g
Used to hate writing (Score:2)
I used to hate writing. First of all, I'm left handed so writing with a pen often meant ink stains on my hand and smeared handwriting. Secondly, I never felt that my handwriting speed could keep up with my brain speed. I'd always have to slow down my thoughts to get them on paper. Finally, I also couldn't easily make edits to my writing. Deciding to reword a sentence or move a paragraph meant ugly looking cross outs, hard-to-write-over white-out or completely rewriting the page I was working on.
Then, I
It's IRC (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm going to have to say that IRC is to blame here. Poor typing is endemic on IRC, and is even worse on Second Life, where the graphics detract from the online communication.
If you want to increase or maintain your English skills, socialize with people who put an emphasis on proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Without those fundamentals in the people around you, your dialogue will eventually sink to match their levels.
If you're wondering, yes, this would probably be considered elitist by many
Hooray for meetings! (Score:2)
I suppose I can thank our weekly team meetings for helping keep my handwriting skills up to snuff. I always take notes at the meetings so I can remember what we talked about and make to-do lists. Sometimes, the meetings become long and tedious, but now when I feel myself itching to look at the clock I can just remember that I'm practicing an important skill: writing on paper with a pen. And I'll know it's all worth it.
Some personal observations (Score:2)
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I could care less.
(Ugh that was painful to type.)
Handwriting (Score:2)
It's called evolution. We developed a tool to save time, can mass-produce that tool in a standardised format and find it infinitely preferable to older alternatives. I can type over 100WPM. I can write *legibly* about 15-20, faster if only I have to read it. That's about as much as could ever be said for my handwriting, anyway: legible.
My mother once complained to my primary school (aged about 8) that the teachers were saying my handwriting wasn't good enough. Her rule was, if it was good enough for th
I don't understand the connection (Score:2)
Typing has ruined my handwriting (Score:2)
Ignoring the fact that my handwriting was always crap, typing HAS made it worse. I don't think it's had any effect on my spelling.
However, using modern browsers like Firefox & Safari with spellcheckers have probably hurt it. It's not a problem at home, butt when I'mm at wrok with IE, I kant spel anymore.
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Ewe shed knot tryst you're spill chucker.
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I have found the same thing. Though years of IRC and IM have definitely made me lean further and further towards typing how I speak, and further away from how I would write a formal paper. Here, I tend towards speech... because....well.... fuck the gramar and speling nazis in their asses.
Though marrying a southie girl has actually caused me to remember many of my grammar rules.
"Baby 'I saw' not 'I seen'" :)
"fuck you"
-Steve