Microsoft Office is Making Me Dumber!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

I know there are people out there who hate Microsoft software and people out there who--well, I don't know anyone who LOVES Microsoft products, so the parallel structure falls apart a little bit. Maybe I should say this: there are people out there who hate Microsoft software and people out there who DON'T hate Microsoft software products.

I'd definitely fall into the second group. Yes, I understand that--in almost everything Microsoft does--it is always playing catch up, and almost always creating a product that is ALMOST as good as the original, but it's cheaper and there's more of it, so it becomes the standard (Think Windows to Mac OS, or Internet Explorer to Netscape Navigator, or Windows Movie Maker to Apple imovie). Despite that, though, I don't have a problem with most Microsoft products. They work pretty well, and (with the exception of Windows Vista, which I've talked about earlier) I find Microsoft software products to be satisfying.

I do have one problem with Microsoft Office, though: it's swiftly making me stupid! Let me explain. One of Microsoft Office's most convenient features is the automatic spell check. As you type, the system checks your spelling, and--if you misspell a word or make a typo--the program automatically corrects it. The program fixes the problems without even telling you it is doing so, so if you're not looking at the screen but actually reading something off of a piece of paper, you'll type "I saww teh large dog," but when you look up at the screen you'll see "I saw the large dog."

That's great, until you try to type in a program that doesn't have this feature. The website that I use to create this blog (jottit.com) doesn't have automatic spell correction, and what I've found over the last few weeks of using the site is this:

1. I no longer know how to type certain words. Typing is a lot like reading. When you first start reading, you have to sound out every word you see, but as you build your skills, you develop what we in the educational field call "sight words," words that you recognize just by looking at them. For instance, most people reading this don't have to sound out "cat" or "dog" or even a bigger word like "category." You've read those words enough that you see them and you recognize them. Not so with words like "recognify" or "intrapedagolical." You've never seen those words before*, so you most likely have to study them to figure out how to say them. Typing works the same way. When you first start typing you have to think about where your fingers go for common words, but eventually your brain builds patterns of finger movements for words frequently used. And thanks to Microsoft Office, many of my patterns are wrong. I spell "the" as "teh," and "every" as "veery." And because this website doesn't have automatic spelling, I type a blog entry and then look up to see all kinds of weird permutations of words.




2. I no longer remember how to spell. Another problem caused by this feature of Office is that I've forgotten how to spell even fairly common words because I know that as long as I get my typing sort of close to the actual spelling the program will autocorrect the spelling for me. Thus, I've forgotten how to spell "definitely" (which I had to look up yesterday, and intentionally re-used today so that I would get the spelling in my head again) and similar words.
   

So I'm getting dumber by the minute, and Microsoft is to blame!

*How do I know you've never read these before? Because I made them up. They're not real words...

...except that there are two pages on the Internet that actually use "recognify," though I've looked in several places, including online and offline dictionaries, including the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, and the word isn't real.