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Subject:Re: Is phonetic spelling leading us astray? From:"Bonni J. Graham" <bgraham -at- ELECTRICITI -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 4 Oct 1994 10:09:28 PST
Gary Mason wonders about the misspelling of "lose":
"Since it is being spelled with an extra "o", I wonder if the root of the
problem is based in the teaching of phonetic spelling."
Interesting. In thinking about it, I wonder if it's phonetic spelling at
the root, or if it's the prevalence of word processing programs and
spellcheckers. It's awfully easy to hit a key twice or to hold it down
just a little too long. Proofreading anymore seems to be restricted to
running the document through a spellchecker, and there's no spellchecker
(unless it's paired with a grammar checker -- and yes, I know that I'm not
being consistent in my spacing between spellchecker and grammar checker)
that will catch "loose" as a misspelling, since it's not. I suspect that
has a lot more to do with it.
Bonni Graham
Manual Labour
Director, Region 8 Conference
bgraham -at- electriciti -dot- com