Spelling Police.

One of my college courses, “English Composition”, is an online course. Back in December when I was setting up my schedule, this was the last course that I needed to schedule and I had successfully kept my Fridays empty and I didn’t want to mar that record, so I signed up to take the course online.

Now there’s a sentence that would make the grammar police cringe.

As with most online courses, you post your coursework to a discussion board, where your classmates and instructors read and review it and make comments. Since this is my first stab at college in a long time, I’ve held back a bit in my comments. I say things like “I found your essay had a casual feel to it. I didn’t feel like I had wasted my time by reading it” in an effort to try to be nice to some of the rougher drafts posted for discussion.

However, as of late I’ve started becoming the spelling police. I’ve begun posting little catch phrases in an effort to help my fellow students with their spelling mistakes.

“You want two desserts in the desert, not two deserts in your dessert!”

“Why don’t you lose some weight so your pants will be loose?”

“Where shall you wear your clothes tonight?”

“They’re excited that their friends will be there.”

I believe that correct spelling is important regardless of the medium or the circumstance. We all make mistakes, but that’s what the red little squiggle line in Word is for, to help you find your mistakes. When I was working in technical support I would get messages that held intelligent phrases such as “My ‘puter went broke. Can U fixit?” Requests such as these went to the bottom of the pile and rarely saw the light of day. When I was at the radio station, resumés were instantly discarded if I saw a spelling mistake or if said document was based on an Office template. I figured a lack of attention to detail and a lack of creativity were not qualities I was looking for in a candidate for air personality.

I can’t even send a text message on my cell phone without writing out the whole word. It’s just not in my nature.

At least I know the proper spelling of OCD.