[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by Carth

The other thing is, many who will read what you write won't have a clue as to whether the spelling is correct or not, and if they do think 'oh that looks strange' . . the usual excuse is 'bloody auto correct'

True (he says, whilst laughing!), I usually ignore spell checking unless I have misspelled something owing to a typo (which it usually, all too often, is!). I was an excellent speller even in primary school - in fact it used to get me singled out for extra attention; at a parents' evening a teacher said it was lovely to hear me reading and spelling. One said, when I was 4, she was certain I'd pass the 11-Plus - which I did.

This was despite my terrible handwriting, which a French teacher in grammar school likened to the footprints of a spider which had fallen into an inkwell after having had too much of whatever spiders have on a night out. I didn't argue, a) because I was too busy laughing (I still do when I remember it), and b) because, alas, he was right. It is terrible. A frequent complaint at parents' evenings was "superb work - if only the handwriting wasn't so atrocious!"
<plaintive>It's not that I didn't try. I did.</plaintive> I tried several different pens over those 5 years.
But my O-Levels were my revenge: I was warned that if the papers weren't up to scratch, they'd be trashed.
Yeah.
English AEB (Associated Examining Board, actually harder than O-Level) - A
Physics and Chemistry - A
Maths - B
Joint 16+ French - B
Technical Drawing (after a very shaky 3rd year start) - C
CSE French - 1
Oh, and History - E, but I was so bored when, in the 4th year, we started on industrial history rather than kings, queens, battles etc, I really wasn't bothered.

I've long since realised that a few of us brighter ones were receiving extra, such as spelling, e.g., chrysanthemum, precisely because we were bright. <sarcasm>This was back in the days when teachers used to encourage bright pupils.</sarcasm>

Thankfully I retained my spelling skills even after the stroke. It's memory where I fall down nowadays.

---------- Post added at 18:02 ---------- Previous post was at 18:00 ----------

Originally Posted by Paul

The site has no spell checking capabilities.

Ah. It's a Firefox issue, then. But I feel it shouldn't highlight British spelling when its default is set to GB. Oh well.