Proof, proof, proof

[Ole Anderson]

Mini rant: Not so much on the Creek, but particularly on FaceBook: Do people ever go back and proof what they are writing? And not just responses to a thread, but I have seen the OP write a short question or comment that makes no sense what-so-ever, and is full of grammatical full-on goofs and obvious misspellings that spell check would find. And apparently it is improper to call anyone out on it or you are now the "spelling police". I cringe every time I see a "there" when they meant "their". So I have learned to presume that they are truly spelling challenged or simply don't know how to use the edit or delete tools provided, which is probably not a bad assumption as you almost need to have someone tell you how to find those tools the first time. My strength as an engineer certainly was not the use of the English language, but I learned to proof everything I did, whether it was a report, letter or email. Yet sometimes I go back and read something I wrote previously and wonder, how the heck did I miss that. We are all human.

And at some point I must have put "i" in my dictionary as an acceptable word. I wish I could figure out how to correct that one...

OK, I proofed this at least six times, wonder what I missed?

[Jim Becker]

Ole, a lot of folks post from SmartPhones and "Autocorrect" quite often does a number on things when folks are typing with their thumbs...and as you note, they rarely read things before hitting "post". And many folks don't realize that one can go back and edit out errors, too...

[Nathan Johnson]

For most, it's no longer important, and that's a shame.
It does not bother me in the least when someone gets upset when I point out their spelling errors. Language is important....be better.

[Grant Wilkinson]

Ole: Since you ask what you missed, I'll bring it to your attention.

You say, "My strengths as an engineer certainly was not". Your subject and verb do not agree. You can either say, "my strength as an engineer certainly was not", or "my strengths as an engineer certainly were not".

[Al Launier]

idon'tknoitlokspretygodtome

[Ole Anderson]

Ole: Since you ask what you missed, I'll bring it to your attention.

You say, "My strengths as an engineer certainly was not". Your subject and verb do not agree. You can either say, "my strength as an engineer certainly was not", or "my strengths as an engineer certainly were not".

I wish I could say I intentionally left a kernel for someone to find. Thanks, went back and corrected it. Lots of my corrections happen after something is posted.

[Jim Koepke]

It is possible to edit a Facebook post? Please tell me more.

Proofing what is typed is old school for me. At one time my employment was in the printing trades. One old story is about the time we were filming a customer's artwork for a job. I mentioned to the production manager that one of the words didn't look right to me. At the time my spelling ability was atrocious*. He said the customer spelled it that way so it must be right. After we started printing the customer looked at it and was in shock that there was a misspelled word in the art.

During my high school years one teacher was especially verbose in the comments on my paper about how I misspelled the same word three different ways. My spelling has improved greatly over the years. My thanks for that go to a person who used to argue with me over our political choices. Often his only counter to my argument was that my spelling was off. As there are many well educated folks who say absolutely nothing worth the time of listening, there are as many less educated who can make brilliant statements with perhaps a bit less flair and polish. My response was to remove that avenue of the misspelled words argument from his arsenal.

jtk

*I may not have know how to spell it right, but if it looks wrong, it usually is.

[Roger Nair]

Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.

[Jim Koepke]

Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.

Thanks Roger, I will have to give that a try on my next typo.

jtk

[Lee DeRaud]

Yes, Jim, Facebook posts can be edited. Place your curser in line with the top line and to the far right hand of the window. Three dots will appear, click on the dots and a menu box will come up. Select your choice of action.

The depressing part is the huge percentage of people who think it works like text or email, resulting in an incorrect post, followed by a reply correcting it (usually with mistakes of its own), lather-rinse-repeat. You can even delete a post on FB, which apparently comes as a surprise to people who put a post on the wrong friend's page, then post an "oops, sorry" reply. The fact that the default setting is "return equals send" doesn't help a bit.

(My main beef with FB is the inability to do bold/underline/italic without dubious third-party apps, but that's another subject entirely.)

[Jim Becker]

It is possible to edit a Facebook post? Please tell me more.

It's always been possible to edit a Facebook post...click on the little dots in the upper right corner of your post (whether you are the OP or are making a comment to someone else's post) and click on "edit"...you may need to hover your pointer for the three dots to appear. FB does mark your posts as "edited" after changing them, too.

[Myk Rian]

Ole, a lot of folks post from SmartPhones and "Autocorrect" quite often does a number on things when folks are typing with their thumbs...and as you note, they rarely read things before hitting "post". And many folks don't realize that one can go back and edit out errors, too...

I ran a BBS for 14 years before the Inet came around, and saw the same terrible grammer/spelling back then. Smartphones is no excuse for people spelling so bad.

[Jim Becker]

I ran a BBS for 14 years before the Inet came around, and saw the same terrible grammer/spelling back then. Smartphones is no excuse for people spelling so bad.

No disagreement with it not being an excuse. I was just pointing out part of the reason this happens in current times relative to technology...

[Roger Feeley]

Ole, a lot of folks post from SmartPhones and "Autocorrect" quite often does a number on things when folks are typing with their thumbs...and as you note, they rarely read things before hitting "post". And many folks don't realize that one can go back and edit out errors, too...

I can’t resist sharing my favorite autocorrect story:
I was a programmer working with PCs. The email app did an automatic spell check when you clicked send. It would scan your text and ask you to approve each correction. When the process was complete the email would be sent.

I was composing an email to be sent up my chain of command including the Chief Operating Officer.

The sentance was, “For this project, I will need at least a 286 or perhaps a Pentium.”

Admittedly, I wasn’t paying close attention when I approved the last spelling change. As sent, the sentance became:

“For this project, I will need at least a 286 or perhaps a Penis.”

My boss just about fell out chair laughing. The COO replied simply, “Approved.”

[John K Jordan]

Good luck with changing that! Some people just don't care as long as their general idea or question gets through. Some people post from a phone with fat fingers and never seem to review. Some don't use a spell checker because it is annoying and they can't spell anyway. Some may not have English as a native language. Many may consider excellence in woodworking more importanter than excellence in communication.

Many are truely challenged with spelling, including me. A bit of dyslexia doesn't help things. I will spell some words wrong even after years of watching the spell checker correct them. I rely on the spell checker and always glance back over the message before I post unless the house is suddenly on fire. But as inferred by Grant's note, all humans make mistakes. I try to read everything I write carefully but still miss some errors. I especially look for combinations such as "your/you're", "there/their", "waste/waist", and "to/too" and for sentencences I started to edit then got distracted.

The ephemeral nature nature of some quick posts makes proofing seem a little less important.

My Android phone has a feature for removing words I added to my dictionary. Such tools are browser and word processor specific. For example, I searched with google for "editing spell checker word firefox" and it gave me some instructions.

Speaking of FaceBook, I used it for a few years then quit. Useful on occasion but overall a huge waste of time (See, an incomplete sentence, right out there in public!)

JKJ