[caption id=”attachment_576” align=”aligncenter” width=”382” caption=”“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”“][/caption]

Geek’s Dilemna: When Spell Check Must Be Wrong

I read. A lot. Constantly. Can’t help myself. I read all day long. I read on my breaks, I read at lunch, I read in the bathroom, I read when I get home, I read on the internet, I read books, I read magazines, I read the ingredients on boxes, I read bumper stickers while I’m driving, I read the shampoo bottle in the shower. You get the point. I like to read. No, it’s beyond that, I need to read. My brain needs the constant inputting of information the way my lungs need air. When you read as much as I do, spelling becomes second nature. I mispronounce words all the time, but misspell them? Un-bloody-likely. So you can imagine my shock recently when Spell Check dared suggest I was spelling the word “dilemna” incorrectly. It insisted it was spelled “dilemma,” double-m’s. Dilemma or Dilemna? Dilemma? Impossible! I even had a little word game where I would sound it out in my head “dil-LEM-na,” to ensure I would spell it correctly. Spell Check had to be wrong. Obviously I can mistype a word, but this wasn’t clumsy fingers hitting the wrong keys. This was something else entirely different. This was Spell Check telling me – a 7-time St. Raphael’s spelling bee champion for the love of God! – that I didn’t know how to spell a word. [caption id=”attachment_577” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”Be shcool, stay in school.”][/caption] Usually when I check my spelling in Word Docs all it ever wants to change is my own last name. I grew up reading William Safire’s On Language column in New York Times Magazine. I consider myself a true wordsmith, a word geek, an etymologist, a cunning linguist, a lexicologist. And here I was, being chastised by a computer program for a misspelling that I typed in intentionally? Inconceivable! You keep saying that word. Convinced I was correct, I googled “dilemma or dilemna” and my world was shattered. Apparently I was part of a lost generation who were taught to spell the word incorrectly, and no dictionary in the world was going to back me up. Dilemma it is and always has been. I have to admit, though, I do take some solace in knowing I am not alone. Right now all over the world, millions of people are going about their daily lives, content in the geek certainty that they know how to spell the word “dilemna” correctly. Our teachers really need to do better. It’s quite the dilemma indeed.