Reasons For Typos

FIRST General Forum
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Hi guys,

I’ve been reading an exchange in another thread regarding the correct spelling of a sponsor’s name. It’s been an interesting exchange and it has to do with how each of us manages our efforts to spell correctly. Just in this brief exchange, I’ve seen failure to check the sponsor’s logo as one reason and being in a hurry as another reason. Although I try to check the spelling and, if needed, do a little research - I’m as guilty as the next person for being rushed with my work and neglecting to pay attention.

Since I seem to make more typos than the average bear, I’ve given a lot of thought as to why. Here’s some reasons that I’ve come up with:

  • Thinking out loud. While I’m typing, I’m actually thinking out loud and as such, my fingers fly over the keys. When I check for mistakes, my eyes fly over the words and I miss some of the mistakes I’ve made.
  • Being in a rush. This is similar to thinking out loud only worse. When I’m in a rush to post a response or create a thread, I create mistakes. To compound the mistakes made by rushing, I fail to locate the typos and mistakes in my post because I’m rushed.
  • Being ignorant. The results of thinking out loud occur but in an ignorant manner. I haven’t checked to see if my information is correct or current. This can be for a couple of reasons - being in a rush and being lazy. Rushing while being lazy can really kill a point that I’m trying to make or cripple the information that I’m attempting to contribute.
  • Not caring. Well, I always care but I can see how it would affect typos. I don’t care about posting stats and data that teams accrue. My work would be really sloppy and careless and would not reflect on the teams correctly or well if I did post stats and data. In doing so, it could potentially hurt their rep and would be disastrous to mine. So… I don’t go there. That work is left for others who do it well and enjoy it. They are the CD members who can showcase the teams’ stats and help them shine.
  • Not writing my post or response in Word first and checking for typos and misinformation before posting in CD. This is relatively simple to do, especially if what I have to say is important to me and I care enough to share it. This post is an example. I haven’t drafted it in Word first and will probably use the edit button many times before the day is out.

As we can see, I have a lot of excuses for my typos… I mean, reasons.

Jane

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If you’re posting on CD, or any other website, using Google Chrome is an excellent solution. It has a built in spell-checker that saves my life from typos. This exterminates the need to draft any posts in Word.

I think Firefox has the same feature.

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I was going to post essentially the same thing as Tom above. Firefox saves my life with the spell-checking.

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Moral of the story: The only reason to ever use Internet Explorer is to download Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. :smiley:

But yes, to keep it on the point of the OP, please run a quick scan through your post before you click “submit reply”. I also suggest first hitting “Preview Post”. I do that almost every time.

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IESpell! It’s free for personal use. I find it really annoying IE is the only major browser without built-in spell check.

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There is also a plugin called “After the Deadline”](http://afterthedeadline.com/) for Chrome and Firefox that does contextual spell checking as well as style and grammar checking. You just click a little spell-check symbol (ABC with a check) and it checks and analyzes your spelling.

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