My secret to spelling
As you read this, I am heading north on my yearly road trip to the tundra, well outside New York City, it might as well be the tundra! So, if I am missing when my next blog is due, call the Mounties!
I am almost done with my new Mick Murphy Key West Mystery, To Beat the Devil. Even with spellcheck I am a lousy speller. I have the American Heritage dictionary on my desk, and I really use it because MSWord Spellcheck doesn’t always give me the right meaning of a word I want to use, so I look it up to see if I’ve got the right word for what I want to say. Love the dictionary.
But with my limited spelling skills, I still have trouble with names of countries. Philippines, right? So why are the people from there Filipinos Sober that would confuse me, drunk on a writer’s rush, it’s murdering me. So dose maître d’ and hor d’oeuvres! That’s the short list.
Do you Google? Hell, if you’re breathing you Google or use another search engine. I have found out that Google is a great dictionary. I can type, as I did above, my idea for hourderves and, bingo, Google knows I’m an idiot and brings up the correct spelling (as it dose in the above paragraph) and various meanings and uses.
Is that great or what? I am lucky to have two computer screens and keep Google on one and my writing on another. Google can be fooled, but try it out as a dictionary. You remember in high school when you had trouble spelling a word and the smartass teacher would tell you to look it up in the dictionary (maybe it only happened to me)? And you said, How can I look it up if I can’t spell it. The vice principal told me many times I should refrain for those types of comments.
Mr. Casey would have seen a lot less of me if I had Google back then. Hey, did I ever tell you about walking up hill to school in the snow? Both ways? Next time.
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