Daiya,

The requests you and all the rest have witnessed, my wildest fantasies
wouldnt come close. But talk of apocalypses and such just doesnt fit the
simple thing Ive suggested. Quite the contrary to your concern it is a way
to improve spelling, to become less dependent on computer programs. Imagine
taking pen to paper with no spell check safety net! Spelling is the base of
producing meaningful communication and if providing an option to improve this
ability is an absurd request of a word processing program as extensive as MS
Word, well I just dont see it.

Spell checker is the single most important advancement to the basic text
editor. This speaks directly to the importance of spelling. (All of this is
my opinion only, lest you think someone is holding a gun to my head telling
me to type this wink)

The addition of a spelling tutor feature or module would no more belabor MS
Word with the responsibility of teaching spelling than the automatic spell
check or grammar check features do now. In fact one could argue that MS Word
is a bad citizen, anti-education and pro-lazy by allowing users to simply
guess and stab to get close to words, auto correcting typing mistakes and
pointing out grievous grammatical errors.

Im not advocating a mallet pop out of the monitor and box the user about
the head until the correct spelling is entered or poor spellers be logged in
a national database. If you dont want to pursue better spelling, then dont
enable the feature. You are your own captain.

And what you call the apocalypse, Mr. Bill Gates calls productivity.

Thank you for the thoughtful comments. Will you please join me in a pint?


"Daiya Mitchell" wrote:

I am almost positive this group *has* seen requests that Word should solve
crosswords. Or perhaps I have it confused with the request that Word should
help write poetry by providing a rhyming dictionary.

Not to mention all the demands that Word should include a template for "how
to word a cover letter", a template for a letter of condolence to a friend,
a template for a letter of reprimand for an employee, etc, etc, etc.

Rndthought,

Suzanne's resistance to your idea comes from a context of seeing years of
ridiculous requests for Word. The ability to "export a list of misspelled
words in this document" could be quite useful, and I might vote for that,
but Greg's add-in has it covered.

But I am *solidly* against any implication that it is Word's responsibility
to teach people how to spell, and that's what you seemed to be asking.

I personally think that the more we depend on computer programs to *think*
for us on an everyday level, the closer we move to the apocalypse. So
resisting such a suggestion becomes a matter of principle.


On 12/6/05 1:51 AM, "Tony Jollans" wrote:

I'd have to agree with Suzanne here. Word Processing is what Word does. Just
because it uses words does not mean that it does, or should, provide every
imaginable function that might also use words; before you know it someone
will be suggesting that it solve crosswords.