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Spell "chequer" far from foolproof
It happens every year. My English students type essays on their computers. I read their work and circle any misspelled words that I see. I hand the papers back. Within minutes, I have a line of students at my desk, demanding an explanation. How could they have spelling errors in their papers? They ran spell check. They fixed every word that was highlighted for review. I must be mistaken.
I smile and carefully explain that while a word may be spelled correctly, it may still be used inappropriately. I cite a few examples to illustrate the point--their and there; see and sea; ring and wring.
My students return, grumbling, to their seats. They struggle with their dictionaries, confirming the correct meaning of each word that I've circled.
Every now and then, one of them sends a look my way. Inflicting mental anguish on junior high writers is my singular pleasure in life, the look says. I smile again, remembering all the teachers who sent me back to my desk, and back to my dictionary, with similar instructions.
Every English teacher fights this battle. Spell check is great, as far as it goes. But it's merely a tool, not a blanket excuse for flipping the "Off" switch in a student writer's brain. The trick is getting students to understand that.
Then, about a year ago, someone gave me a copy of a funny poem that sums up the spell check problem perfectly. Simply entitled "Spell Checker," it conveys the dangers of trusting an automated program to take the place of human judgment.
I don't know who authored the poem, but since I posted a copy in the English room, and one on the journalism bulletin board, the number of disgruntled students lined up at my desk has dropped significantly.
The poem goes like this: "Eye halve a spelling chequer. / It came with my pea sea. / It plainly marques four my revue / Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word / And weight four it two say / Weather eye am wrong oar write / It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid / It nose bee fore two long / And eye can put the error rite / Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it / I am shore your pleased two no / Its letter perfect awl the weigh / My chequer tolled me sew."
And there you have it, the best example of spell-check humor that I've ever seen. I suppose a similar piece could be written about any computerized tool we try to employ in place of our brains.
Case in point? I have a screen saver program that writes poetry. It combines odd words and phrases to create bizarre lines of rhyme. Some of the passages are thought-provoking, in an accidental sort of way. But the thing is no Robert Frost and it never will be.
No matter how far automation takes us, it can't quell the need for human judgment, applied to the process of life and the process of writing.
"I am shore your pleased two no" that this piece of writing was run through spell check before it was submitted. Is it "perfect awl the weigh?" Probably not. Hard as I try, I often make "miss steaks." But "weather eye am wrong oar write," I'm willing to admit that possibility. I don't even need my spell "chequer" to say "eye tolled ewe sew."