Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Spell check not always a writer's friend

My friend and colleague, Dr. Guy Reel, just sent me this piece (click on boldface headline above) about nuances of our English language.

The article, a commentary from the New York Times, talks about these tricky pairs of words:

•straighten and straiten

•gibe and jibe

•teaming and teeming

•insuring and ensuring
at

5 comments:

  1. SaM-1August 28, 2009 at 10:27 AM

    WOW... we discussed this in his class on Tuesday. It was very interesting, especially the whole gibe and jibe thing. I had no idea those were words!

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  2. AnonymousAugust 29, 2009 at 8:57 PM

    Speaking of spell check, there is a good program Spell Check Anywhere (SpellCheckAnywhere.Net) it adds spell check to all programs.

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  3. BritasticSeptember 4, 2009 at 8:28 PM

    That's interesting, I have never had any problems with those words. Dr. Timbs did you unsubscribe to my blog? Shame, shame! haha

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  4. Kathleen BrownSeptember 8, 2009 at 2:58 PM

    Dr. Timbs! Spell check has screwed me over many a time...Anyway your email address keeps rejecting my messages so I figured I'd post my blog here...

    http://kathleenb2189.blogspot.com/

    It was great talking to you the other day.

    :)

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  5. carolina magicSeptember 10, 2009 at 11:39 AM

    Hey Kathleen. Yes, spell check is surely not perfect. I once had a student, for example, write about a "toe truck"?

    Nuf said!

    ReplyDelete