Bad Spelling

Mark Twain once said, "I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." Those of us that wouldn't make the final round of a third-grade spelling bee have to agree with the famed author. Luckily computers help make spelling mistakes a thing of the past. As I write these words on the computer, it automatically highlights any misspelled word with a red-squiggly underline. I then have the option of fixing it. Most of the time I can figure it out and get the word right. If I try a couple of times and still can't figure out the spelling, I have two courses of action: use a different word, or open a word processor and look at its helpful suggestions.

Recently a coworker asked how to spell ambivalent. Actually he first threw out a phrase that he wanted condensed into a single word and ambivalent is the word he decided to use. His next question was how to spell it. I opened my word processor and gave it my best shot. In my opinion, I wasn't even close. However I was close enough for the program to figure out what I was trying to write and it gave me the correct spelling.

I gave the spelling to my coworker, who crafted it into an elegantly worded sentence for an e-mail that even Mark Twain would be proud to claim. This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw with the punch-line, "On the Internet, nobody knows your a dog." I'd like to add a phrase to the end that says, "or spell like one."