When I was a younger lad in elementary school, I was always pretty good at spelling. In fact, subjects such as English and language arts were always much easier than the more mathematical subjects. I know my father would have loved for me to have followed in his footsteps and gone into an engineering type of profession, but my brain simply doesn’t work that way. I know I would have made a great deal more money if I had taken a more mathematically-based career path, but alas, here I am using words instead of numbers. I have a feeling my dad would be okay with what I am doing now. He may even like some of my “stuff” here.
I would be the last person around who would say that I am beyond reproach and my work never contains the occasional “typo” or, heaven forbid, a misspelled word. In order to help “catch” any misspelled words that may creep into any given story, my computer endeavors to automatically correct a word any time the computer thinks I have made a mistake. It tends to be rather sneaky about this and makes the “corrections” when I am not looking. I guess that’s an attempt to spare my feelings over having misspelled a word. Usually, I don’t mind that level of checking. In fact, I really do appreciate the fact that the computer does not wish me to look like a writer who is bad at spelling.
The biggest problem with all this comes when I spell a person’s name and the computer disagrees with the spelling. If I can catch the computer changing the spelling of a person’s name, I can usually win the argument. Where it causes an issue is when the computer works surreptitiously behind my back and makes a correction without my permission. That has happened on occasion. Once, it happened on the Jail Report and a relative of the person whose name appeared on the report complained that the name was misspelled. I would think most people would appreciate a misspelled name on the Jail Report, but this person wanted the name spelled correctly, so I ran a correction. I do strive for accuracy at all times.
I wonder what will happen when the computers completely take over and they are faced with a name they don’t recognize. Maybe that will mean a little more job security, here on the Sunnie Side.