RE: Letters

>I am sure when the typewriter first came out many were worried the
>faster way of producing would ruin writing. It probably became an excuse
>for spelling mistakes and mistaken meaning. If you are not willing to
>think before you write-then why do it?
>

Bernie,

I don't see where the last statement fits on the overall of your message.
The ability to "think before you write" is inherited. It has nothing to do
with the ability to express one's thoughts on any given subject without
errors on it. Remember that the speaked word it's a much more quick method
and yet may contain errors on it. It is off course a good thing to think
before you say it, but I doubt I would want to do this when talking to a
friend about Titanic.

Most people write on the fly and all books were written that way. It has
more to do with one's grasp of the written word and, most important of all,
experience. There is of course, a moment were you ought to stop and check
what you wrote given it's context and possible errors you may want to find.

Spelling and grammar mistakes are very common. Even on published books. I
guess the major reason for this being not speedy writing, but overall lack
of good education processes on that matter and the richness of the language
itself.

eMail comes near the "top of the chain-food" on this matter. The need to
make ourselves understandable leads to one single language, English. For me,
this means that almost every single sentence has to be scanned as soon as I
finish it. Then I'll have to pass the all message on the spelling checker.
And all this still doesn't make my message bulletproof. I can make a myriad
of grammatical errors without knowing it. Nevertheless my meaning was
present and on the overall concept I really was able to communicate. For
some, spell checking it's a drag. But they can still communicate.

On the top of that "chain-food" comes chat software. I think we don't need
to go to details here as it may seem obvious to everyone what a rich
communication process this is, despite the fact that it may convey more
spelling and grammatical errors then hairs in my head. (Disclaimer: I'm not
even near to bald).

The static word, if I may say so, the one that comes on web pages... Now,
that I agree that must be subject to serious scrutiny by the author. But
still there are people who can express whole worlds of ideas in much less
words then the ones I used in this email and without so much errors.
Experience and a good educational system.

Regards,
Mario Figueiredo

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