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On 07/01/2014 18:05, Gordon Henderson wrote: > All through my school days I was continually reprimanded by my teachers > for my dreadful spelling and handwriting. Dyslexia hadn't been invented > at that point - neither had computers. So I was continually told I'd > never do well. > > I found that quite hard to bear at school. Marks deducted from a maths > exam because I spelt something wrong. That sort of thing. (And yes, that > used to happen - I was physically abused with the belt and yard stick > and verbally abused for being a rotten writer). > > > Ode to the Spell Checker > > Eye halve a spelling chequer > It came with my pea sea > It plainly marques four my revue > Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. > > Eye strike a key and type a word > And weight four it two say > Weather eye am wrong oar write > It shows me strait a weigh. > > As soon as a mist ache is maid > It nose bee fore two long > And eye can put the error rite > Its rare lea ever wrong. > > Eye have run this poem threw it > I am shore your pleased two no > It's letter perfect awl the weigh > My chequer tolled me so. > > Mmmm. Ghoti for supper tonight! > > Gordon > 1 Thanks for the poem. 2. In 1950s I was severely belted sometimes six or seven times a day in different classes,for spelling mistakes and handwriting. It makes you hate school, but like Gordon I learned to learn later in life. Funny, that I now make my living analysing and correcting legal texts to suit engineering risk I consider appropriate to the company ( where I am a contract employee) to accept; and have ended up with a far greater vocabulary than most in the trade. 3. Handwriting is still 'like a random walk by a hen with ink on claws'. 4. Provided you have a spell checker that is correct for both parties to a contract, it "might work". Spell-checkers sometimes work, but UK English/USA English is a problem as they have not only different spelling but very different concepts on words "shall" and "will" and some other verbs. (see 6*) Also the reviewer has to be able to identify the options given, a difficult task for dyslexic reviewer or any reviewer if they are not cognisant with the many meanings of a single word offered by a spell checker. 5. I had a colleague with dyslexia, we invested in a speech to computer text affair (early 1990s) to help him, however it proved sometimes the wrong aid, as he could not review the result easily in text with 'hear', 'here' and such like similar sounds to text. However he was a good designer. Maths was OK! Also some folk may be dyslexic only in one language, but can handle other language scripts with less problems, this was noted by a Russian colleague, using Cyrillic/ English/ Chinese characters. Problem was in his native Cyrillic texts. I do not know if this is so, but he said he 'read letters in Cyrillic', but read 'word shapes' in English /Chinese. 6. * "run" A nice simple word. Not spelling but 'meaning'. Three long hard days to get it correctly understood in a tripartite+1 relationship (Three parties to contract , but one a joint venture with two folk in meeting) Parties: 1) Russian. 2) Chinese, 3) UK and USA joint venture. -- Regards Eion MacDonald -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq