Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Those Horrid Little Red Lines

I discovered something about myself today.
I hate those horrid little red lines that appear when I type out an email or blog post. I know that other people probably love them since they are poor spellers or bad typists. But they are driving me to the edge of insanity. Actually, I think that the real problem is that I must be a kind of perfectionist where these lines are concerned. I don't want to see a single one on my page. I want them all to disappear. Well, from today on, I am going to ignore them. Why? Well, I don't find them helpful at all. They do not give me correct information.

  1. My son is anaphylactic to milk.
  2. Some say that grey hair is a sign of wisdom
  3. I am not a dumb blonde.
Example #1: In this example, the word anaphylactic is not in their dictionary or whatever it is. I tell you this, with the number of times I have typed the word anaphylactic and other variations of the word, they should get a clue and add it in. And what do they give me as an option for correct spelling? Well, one of the words is prophylactic. Now, how many times do you think the average person uses THAT word? Here's another option: Phylactery I bet most of YOU don't know what that is. How many times do you think people email, post, or blog the word phylactery around?!?!

Example #2 and #3: Here we have two words that I have spelled this way all my life. They are correct and acceptable spellings of these words. In the past I have given in to the red lines. But no more!! Today I typed the word blonde and I was appalled to find that red line appear. I am sorry, but blonde looks idiotic without the "e" at the end. So I am keeping my "e" where it belongs!! The silly thing is that if you type in Grey, you don't get a line. I guess if you want to spell a name that way, it's ok.

People tell me that my grey and blonde are British spellings. Well, no one ever told me it was wrong before and I have been using these spellings as long as I can remember. This is what I type automatically. There is not thought to it. It is what comes out. So, Ski, maybe I really do belong in Canada. Maybe I am un-American already. Of course, I am also still very upset that I can no longer use the word "queer" properly because no one knows what it means anymore. It is a cool word and slang has ruined it.

So I will just have to be peculiar and use my antiquated spellings. So I rebel!! There will be red lines in my documents!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean, Becky. I spell grey with an e, and I didn't know that blonde didn't have an e on the end, and how about theatre. Our last name's suggested spelling is, well, you can find out for yourself, but let's just say it's something that I hope people don't associate with my family or me. Please, don't go moving to Canada, we'd really miss you here.

Robin said...

So Becky....why don't you just add the words to your dictionary and there will be no more red lines. Well, all except for queer....and I agree....slang has changed the way we use words!!!