Spell Checking

Brian Dean bridean@worldnet.att.net
Thu, 5 Mar 1998 21:37:36 -0500 (00889173456, 19980306022948.AAA2022@briandea)


JANET
I'm not an English teacher either. I work in a hospital laboratory.
Nevertheless, I make a very diligent attempt to spell and punctuate
correctly, and to use proper grammar. It seems to me that by doing so, the
comprehensibility of what I write will be increased (or at least not
diminished), and that seems to be your goal. Even simple errors can cause
your writing to be misinterpreted. We all make careless mistakes, and that
is understandable, but I don't understand why you wouldn't want to eliminate
as many as possible.

BRIDEAN
The answer is feasibility.  If I wanted to eliminate ALL POSIBLE errors I would
have to send my posts to qualified professionals in whatever field I am delving
into.  I would then have to wait for their response, judge what they say 
according to it's merits.  Then I would have to have someone who is more
knowledgable about English than me proofread it.  After about perhaps two
weeks or more of effort I would still not be sure that I am posting something
which ALL POSIBLE errors have been eliminated.  Does Till do all of this
with his posts?  I think not.

Now if I were writing for a major scientific journal then all of the effort mentioned
above would not only be justified, but expected.  But I didn't see any statements
to the effect that this is a major scientific journal.  What I did see was that this
is a list involved in the free discussion of errancy.

This having been said, what would constitute feasible effort in regards to the
errancy list?