re: Has spellcheck killed your spelling skills?

No doubt about it, I also think the modern vocabulary (aside from fr33’s) is severely lacking in range, myself included. Possibly due to things like texting becoming more and more prevalent in society and hand written letters have gone by the wayside. People wrote more elegantly in times previous.

That letter that George C. Marshall read on Saving Private Ryan that Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Bixby is something to behold:

quote:

---

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

---

Nobody uses words like ‘bereavement’ or ‘assuage’ or ‘beguile’ anymore.

Eta: that last sentence is put together freaking perfectly. Opinions about Lincoln aside, the dude was a killer writer and orator.

Saddlee yes.

naw

I aid (sic) one like that once a long time ago.
My current one changes correct words to ones that make no sense in context.

I've been pouring money into a house I got dirt cheap.
Just a couple thousand more and then I'm buying iphone x.

I learn languages.
Work on old ones.
Very glad for my phone.
Decent translators.
When I was killing time at work I used to read the news in languages of interest.
Google is my friend.
I get it about being lazy though. I used to memorize. Now I just put info in my phone.

quote:

---

I also think the modern vocabulary (aside from fr33’s) is severely lacking in range,

---

Thank you. That means a lot. I just try to choose the best words to convey my meaning.

Although sometimes those are the simplest ones

quote:

---

Has spellcheck killed your spelling skills?

---

No, because I'm not a fricking moron.

100 percent

yes it has. I had this conversation with my wife last week.

Just as calculators have killed math skills.