If I can't read it, I won't!

[ezdays]

The drawback is, I no quickly spot errors in news articles, government documents (the ballot mentioned previously), things my boss writes. <snip> I've also learned that mixing in a few cliches, intentional misspellings, and local vernacular can make language seem more personal

You mean like the one I underlined above? :mrgreen:

tooges:

When we had our own electronic manufacturing business, my wife ran the production assembly area. One thing it took her a while to learn is that it is nearly impossible for one to check their own work for correctness. The same goes for writing. I thought I was a wiz-bang writer, no spelling or grammatically errors, until I realized that my secretary was correcting all my mistakes before she typed whatever it was that I wrote. When you try to check your own work, you normally see what you think was there. When you proof your own writing, you tend to read what you wanted to write, not what is actually on the page. Now days, spell checkers and grammar checkers are a godsend, but they are by no means perfect either. For example, right now Firefox is telling me that "chiche" is misspelled, when it isn't, yet it says, "no" is correct, when we know it isn't where it's used. I had a lot of trouble in MSWord with it confusing the use of, "was" and "were". It would try to correct "I was", to "I were". Maybe later versions of the program got better, but we can't all afford to continually upgrade, just because some software mogul was running a bit short of cash.

This thread by all standards is a healthy one, we got to know a lot about others here and their degree of tolerance. Will anyone change as a result? That's hard to say; for me, I'll still be at the mercy of secretaries, spell and grammar checkers, proofreaders and editors, even though I claim to write professionally on occasions.