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Subject:RE: Reading and Editing From:"Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 19 Oct 2001 11:32:10 -0400
Meg and Brian,
I caution against inducing conclusions from your anecdotal experiences. I subvocalize all the time, and I've always been an excellent speller. Spelling ability is completely independent of reading ability, reading style, intelligence (I think we can all agree that Andrew Plato and John Posada are both very intelligent and lousy spellers, for example), mathematical ability, or anything else. Some people are genetically programmed to become good spellers; others aren't (Meg, you have a workaround that does the trick for you--that's great!). Let it go.
The tie-in to tech writing? If you know you spell well, use a spell checker to catch typos. If you know you don't spell well, use a spell checker _carefully_ alongside a real dictionary to catch actual errors. Minor typos will be forgiven by most readers more readily than there/their-type errors.
Dick
Meg Halter wrote:
>I'm jumping in a bit late on this one...
>
>Brian Hoskins writes:
>
><One problem 'sound' thinking can create is that of poor
>spelling. Many children must go through school thinking they are
>unintelligent because they have problems with English spelling
>that is not phonetic. ...
>
>I subvocalize when reading and writing but get around the
>spelling problem in what I suspect is an odd way -- When writing
>English, I mentally pronounce the words using Spanish
>pronunciation, which is phonetic. I essentially carry around
>two sets of pronunciations, one for speaking/reading and one for
>writing. Now that I'm noticing this, even typing this message
>seems strange. But it works fine.
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