Sorry this has nothing to do with model railroading directly, except for being able to help better understand a posting. I’m not in a nit-picking mood. I’m not standing on a soap box. I’m not trying to re-kindle any flame war. I don’t want to post this on anybody’s thread and appear to be picking on them. If I didn’t use the spell checker myself, you would see plenty of spelling errors on my posts.
I just want to try to help the young folk here who are still in school who need help with spelling and punctuation. You are a part of this model railroad community and we’re here to support you in any way. It’s a tough world out there and getting tougher. When (or if) you graduate, you will be competing for jobs with people around the world, not just on your home turf.
Any time you write anything anywhere, use it as practice for spelling. As for using this forum to bring the subject up, well a guy my age, e-mailing a minor and offering help is just way too creepy. So I hope you understand.
So here’s my tip.
Open your e-mail page and start a new letter as if your e-mailing someone. Write what you want to say in your post. Once you have finished, use the spell check. Then copy and paste onto the reply box.
Hopefully you’ll learn what is incorrect and eventually you will remember the correct spelling.
It’s been floating around the internet for years and I’ve seen it on several different web sites and couldn’t find a copy right. I won’t say anything if you don’t.
Reminds me of a photo I saw years ago, of a Southern hi-side gon fresh from the paint shop. It had the road name in individual letters, one to a panel between side ribs.
Everything was fine, until somebody lost his place - resulting in the car side being stenciled S-O-U-T-H-E-U-T.
The great Scottish poet, Robert Burns, in his own quaint dialect, wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men “gang aft agly.” Two thirds of this would have made it through his spell-checker, too. Technology notwithstanding, you’ve still got to learn the language, dudes.
This reminds me of one of the members here (a student) who has on several occasions
spelled the word as “skool”. What I can’t understand is how someone can walk right by
the sign in front of their school everyday and still spell the word like this.[%-)] Dave
gsetter, absolutely great advice… to kids and adults. It is never too late to improve oneself. I was not the best speller as a kid. My Father could never understand how a kid who was 5 or 6 years ahead in reading could get an F in Spelling! (In actual fact, they are very different skills.) As a teacher, I can’t tell you how many times I caught “you know what” from administrators due to stupid spelling errors in letters home to parents. Now having said that, I actually learned to be a good speller when I started using a spell checker near the end of my career. The repetition of seeing the correct spelling and having it pointed out to you is a very quick and painless way to learn good spelling. As a music teacher I know that the only way to learn a difficult passage is to repeat it over and over again correctly.
I can tell you that for most good paying jobs, an applicant that sends in an application with many spelling errors will not get an interview.
And yes, (poor grammer here) as MisterBeasley said, you still need to learn the language. Ya (intentional) know… Things like the difference between there, their, and they’re. Stuff like that.
good evening
besides being good advice,that would make a great scene.im going to incorporate a scene simular to that one on my o scale layout that iam building.
We forget that this is the World wide web. Many of the people with spelling errors in their posts may be posting from another country and English is not their native language.
A few years ago a man posted on a model railroad forum (not this one) and had many spelling and grammatical errors in his post. People flamed him for it. It turned out he was from Italy, was a very accomplished modeler and only wanted to post on an American forum to share a diarama he’d recently completed based on an American prototype. I think people felt foolish for flaming this man.
“Ode to a Spell Checker” (not mine, got it somewhere!)
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 four two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
Eye am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
I dae believe tha wee Robbie woul ha spelled the final word “aglae,” but thae ageen, hae manie o’ the guid folke here be Scots?
Since I also write science fiction I’ve discovered that many spell checkers are technologically challenged, and virtually all of them get constipated if they have to swallow words in languages that aren’t normally written in the English alphabet.
For that matter, this site’s profanity checker is similarly challenged. When I tried to make a polite answer to a polite thank you, it gagged on a four-letter sequence that, when used alone in gutter English, means excrement. I had to resort to Tokyo dialect and replace an i with a ’ to get my message across. Sort of like the smutblocker that blocked an e-mail labeled, “Erection Drawings.”
Postings with correct spelling and correct grammar are much easier to read, and show that you have put a bit of effort into your posting. A posting full of misspellings is less likely to receive a response from some readers.
I have taught English at the University level in a couple of states. Not once on any application did anyone ask if I could spell. If it weren’t for spell check, I’d look like an idiot (some would say even more like one.)
Great picture and an equally great invitation to everyone who writes for public distribution.
Many will agree with your stance but haven’t attempted to do anything about it because, as the below picture was aptly captioned, it’s “Not my job” and I ain’t gonna bother with it. (That at the end was also intentional)
Yes. If you’re using Safari on the Mac, you can simply select the contents of your message before hitting submit, and choose Spelling->Check Spelling under the Edit menu (Command-; is the shortcut). Also, you could choose Check Spelling as You Type under the Spelling sub-menu and you’ll get the red squiggly underline just as in MS Word when you misspell words.
Thanks for the link Ken.
Sometimes people will take what we write the wrong way no matter what. One time I replied to a question and the original poster thought I was inferring that they were stupid. After re-reading my reply a few times, I figured out how it could be taken in a different tone, but it’s never my intent to make anyone feel stupid.
That’s why I have the long winded disclaimer before I made the suggestion. I’m trying to be a “Troll”, just trying to help.
(That at the end was also intentional)