Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.—Henry Louis Mencken
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Spell-Checker Blues
A picture of a dictionary with a magnifying lens on top of it. Image courtesy Wikipedia.org
Ah, spell checker! What would we ever do without it? It’s virtually eliminated writing errors—or has it? While a good spell-checking program can catch a lot, it’s certainly not infallible and should never be completely trusted as the final word on your manuscript.
Variations of the following poem, which we’ve named “Spell-Checker Blues,” have been circulating the Internet for years and have even appeared in books on grammar and in Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. We’ve had many a client forward a version of the poem to us, asking if we’ve encountered it before. It always gives us a chuckle. We would certainly like to applaud the anonymous poet who penned these words and have placed the poem here as a tribute.
Eye halve a spell chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it I am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect awl the weigh My chequer tolled me sew.
About the Poem
At Compass Rose Horizons we take copyright issues very seriously. Despite our best efforts, it is often impossible to track down the original source of Internet jokes and stories that get passed along through e-mail from one person to the next. We encourage any legitimate copyright holders to contact us if there is an objection to the use of specific text or video images. We will either credit an article properly or take down any infringing content immediately.
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