How Spell Check Saved My Life

Binnie Kirshenbaum, in the LA Times, discusses the joys and woes of spell-check.

From the story...

Now, I don't need to know how to spell "arbor" or any other word. Spell-check corrects the misspelled words or flags them, offering me a list of possibilities, which are sometimes amusing. My own name, Binnie, gave my first computer pause. Among the five or six replacement words were bean, binnacle and bunny. I didn't know what a "binnacle" was, but technological wonder of wonders, the definition was but a click away. And yet, I never took to the computer's dictionary. It seems too flimsy, not complete, as if not up to the task of multiple definitions or the many possible nuances of a given word.

Spelling, though, that's different. With the occasional exception -- because this is English -- there is but one way to spell a word. (Mark Twain be damned.) Spell-check, I am fond of saying, has saved my life, which is hyperbolic for sure. Spell-check has not saved my life, but it has saved me hours and hours of looking through the dictionary for the correct spelling of one out of 10 words.