LITERACY

I've always felt a little odd that I appear to be the only one in any of my social circles that doesn't depend on autocomplete or autocorrect to write anything. None of my software has auto-correction or completion enabled, beside coding software which is a very different scenario. I even generally have spellcheckers disabled- I find them annoying. I never quite understood the humor behind those posts of "woops autocorrect lol.". I felt that if it was such a burden that it kept skewing your words and sentences... Why have it enabled at all?

Over time I've kind of been thinking just about the very existence of this feature. I know it's been around for ages, in terms of public availability spell-checking software has been available since the 80's, but it feels like only since around the 2010's did it start affecting people. I suppose right around the boom of smartphones.

I feel that people over-rely on them to tell them if their words are wrong, and while there is convenience in it (who wouldn't want to just be able to tap a wrongly spelled word and instantly get the right one?), I feel like it actively damages the part that correcting your own work is supposed to do. Teach.

Rewriting the word, but correctly, is what helps solidify in your brain the correct spelling. If you let the machine always correct it for you, how do you learn? I understand there is people with dyslexia that heavily benefit from this, but I feel like in reality this is hurting them more. Dyslexia doesn't mean you should be putting less effort into practicing your literacy skills. A misplaced letter or two, sure, but the inability to know how to spell a word at all because you always let the machine fix it entirely for you? There's a difference there.

We already cut out much of our grammatical practice by being mainly focused on doing all our writing work on computers, when it has been proven that writing traditionally is significantly much better at learning subjects.

It's why I like that the neocities editor basically only has syntax highlighting. Fuck it, we ball. Good grammar? Correct syntax? Do it yourself shitbag, you can do it. You gotta be literate to make websites after all.

Anyway, it concerns me to see such a lack of interest in writing with your own efforts. I can't imagine what literature will look like- or what it already looks like. I'm bad at getting myself to read so I haven't really read anything recent- most of the books I read are from 10-20 years ago. Before autocorrecting smartphones became so popular.

At least you know that if you see me write something wrong, its either intentional (funny) or my own incompetence. I like it that way. It keeps the humanity in my words.