I agree. It improves you rspelling

Are you sure about that?

 

Are you sure about that?

Yep! The spelling was fine -- and I never said anything about it improving your spacing!

 

Well, I know reading sure didn't improve MY typing.

 

Reading never improved my spelling. I was ( and still am ) an awful speller. Most of the improvement has come from writing and then spell-checking. Once I have to correct a word enough times, I finally learn how it's spelled.

 

I was always a great speller, top of my class in elementary school and it went right on through high school and college. While working though, my spelling went downhill for no apparent reason, and I often find myself fixing various red-underlined errors when on the computer. When I'm writing by hand, they tend to slip by unnoticed. I don't think I know anyone else who has gotten worse at spelling as they've aged. Usually it's something that either stays constant, or gets better over time.

Matt

 

It's normal for spelling to get worse with time if you are not using it a lot, same as with any other skill.

When I used to write books and magazines for a living my spelling and grammer were much better. Now I am mainly concerned with the functionality of whatever I design, spelling takes second place. A secretary/editor can sort that out while I'm doing the smarter stuff.

 

I don't know about spelling, but I was always really good at arithmetic in school. Then when I got to college I was taking courses where you really needed a decent calculator to do the math (and, yes, generations of engineering students before me got along just fine with a slide rule -- I'll come back to that) and no classes where calculators were prohibited.

What I noticed during my second semester one day was that I was pulling out my calculator to add 12 to 35 (I think that may have been the actual problem, but if not it was something very similar -- I know that the problem didn't even involve any carries, which is what made it slap me upside the head). And I realized that it was uncomfortable to do it mentally and even writing it down didn't make it super simple (though it wasn't "hard" by any means). So I made the decision right then to only use a calculator when I couldn't do the math mentally and to try to work problems so that I could do the math mentally as far as possible. I still do that today and it's paid off in preserving my skills; and it's amazing how students react when they see you work things like 12+35 on the fly in your head -- they really tend to be impressed. It's very sad.

Getting back to my earlier statement about "having" to have a calculator in the courses I was taking. Again, the generations prior to me didn't have that luxury -- I really was right at the transition. In high school the class immediately before mine worked with slide rules and we didn't. While I wish we had, I think I benefited hugely from the fact that just transitioning from a curriculum based on slide rules and trig/log tables to one based on calculators doesn't happen overnight. So the first courses that were affected were the chemistry and physics courses (which started using calculators a couple years earlier) while the last were the core math courses. Thus, I got the best of both worlds (actually, I think the class before me did) in that I learned how to use a scientific calculator effectively in the science courses but still got the theory and skills associated with doing the math manually and with trig/log tables in all of the math courses.

Furthermore, while engineering students before me didn't "have" to have calculators, this was inpart the case because the problems they were assigned were specifically designed to be doable with a reasonable amount of effort using tables and slide rules. The advent of easy access to scientific calculators fostered problems that would have been discarded as being too burdensome for the educational benefit when restricted to slide rules and the same is true today in that the availability of spreadsheets and simulators allows for a richer problem set than what I had when limited to just a vanilla scientific calculator.

 

All the while I was in school, I was thrust into spelling bees.
I have noticed that I have to really pay attention to my spelling, as I get more Ancient.

On calculators, I did not use a calculator at work until the late 70s. I did all the regular functions, including Trig, at work.....using pencil and paper. Back then, I had most formulae memorized. That really helped in the Mechanical Engineering part of fabrication.
Nowadays, after a stroke....have trouble with short term memory.

What did I say?

Life was a lot faster using calculators, especially when I had to transpose mm to inches. Some of my projects woulds be several (pages/blueprints) long, and a calc was necessary to keep up the speed of manufacturing, repair, and assembly.

Now, back to the assembly and repair of hogs and humans.

 

Now, back to the assembly and repair of hogs and humans.

When did the conversation shift to motorcycles?

 

When did the conversation shift to motorcycles?

You should be a stand up comedian... or maybe you were ??

 

So, if religion can't be discussed, as I know FYI, as a matter of fact. Let's introduce "Aliens" in the mux, Oops, mic, Oops, Mix

Maybe it is a Pig Motorcycle, human or all of the above

 

I believe reading really improves your spelling, maybe without you realizing it!

I believe recreational reading is not the norm these days, at least with the younger folks.

Agree, and Agree.
My father was first generation American so he had a very strong desire for correct English (or American, if you know what I mean). That rubbed off on everyone in the family. I read everything I could get my hands on, and one of my methods was to memorize a distorted pronunciation in order to remember the correct spelling. Example: Wren-dez-vous = rendezvous.

If a pig did rendezvous with a man, this would be relevant to the thread.