Well, as I'm the person who dared pull up Jonny on his spelling, despite him being dyslexic (an act on par with pushing Stephen Hawking down a flight of stairs), why don't I get the ball rolling?

It may surprise some of you to learn that I've got a bit of history about calling people out over their spelling and grammar. I'm not *that* pedantic, but it does bother me when people repeatedly get the basics wrong.

Over the years I've seen the response, "I'm dyslexic" a great deal. It's a hard comeback to refute, you can't ask somebody to post a scan of their dyslexia licence.

Speaking as somebody who's not an expert on dyselxia at all (in fact I know nearly nothing about it) some things bother me about a lot of those claiming dyslexia...

- They tend to get small, simple words correct, but repeatedly misspell longer, more complex words.

- They tend to consistently misspell words. Not trying to pick on him, but Jonny kept using 'astronaught', which is neither correct nor phonetically spelled. He also changed to the correct spelling half-way through the sun nicking thread, after the correctly spelled word had been used by others in the thread.

- Common mistakes - your/you're, they're/there/their, to/too, etc. - are also common in their posts. To me this suggests ignorance of language basics, rather than dyslexia.

Now I'm perfectly willing to be educated about the above, and told that they are all symptoms of dyslexia, but, at present, I don't believe they are.

Andrew, to be perfectly honest...

if it bugs you that much, why come on here?

my spelling is sh*t, im well aware of it.
i dont hide it, it does not bother me.

you can read it if not, then who care's.

all your doing is sitting there saying some people cant spell, learn how to spell or i can teach you.

who are you to say what peoples conditions are true or not?

Edited: No personal attacks please!

Here we go again

I don't agree with you, Marco. If you don't like threads about dyslexia, don't read them, but it is a perfectly legitimate, and interesting, topic.

Andrew, you must be aware that you also make repeated spelling errors on certain words. We probably all do to varying degrees. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we are all human, and all make mistakes.

Having said that, I fully agree with you that much of what is often passed off as dyslexia is rather the result of laziness, lack of motivation, etc. Marco has just told us it doesn't matter and he doesn't care, for example.

In response to Jim on the other thread, I just wanted to emphasise that my comments referred to statistics, not to individual cases. So countering with the case of your wife doesn't really achieve much. I still claim what I claimed there. Much of what passes for dyslexia is nothing of the kind. And many people with dyslexia are successful in other fields which do not demand good writing skills, but just because that is the direction they have had to take. Statistically.

My spelling is very poor and F7 is my favourite key on the keyboard.

Does that make me dyslexic, don't know, don't care.

What I don't accept is people who pick holes in other people simply to prove a point, get a reaction or look bigger than they are.

I do know people who have been proven to have various levels of dyslexia, but I don't tend to make a song and dance about it.........

I'll have 10 Benson and Hedges

It's a complicated issue. As I posted in the Twilite Zone (or UFO thread as debunkers call it), I'm familiar with dyslexia as a number of my nearest and dearest suffer with it. I also believe that it is used as a catch-all by some people who do not find spelling easy and/or have never been particularly interested in getting it right. Spelling and grammar are ever-changing and the mores of the time dictate how much importance we attach to getting things "right". I personally am quite anal about it, which works well in partnership with MrsC, as she writes for a number of publications and I get to proof-read her work. However, although I don't like poor spelling and grammar caused by laziness, I accept that it is often due rather to a lack of emphasis on these skills in schools over the last 20 years or so. If people have not been taught the "importance" of doing something correctly, then it is understandable that they won't make much of an effort at it. I also love language used skilfully for its own sake, but I equally get that for some people it is casting pearl before swine.

Enforcer, I agree that my wife's case proves nothing statistically, but I think it serves as an example that dyslexic people in my immediate circle (as well as others I know of) do seem to be creative, possibly more than the norm. Whether this is because of needing to find alternative careers or because of a natural leaning I don't know. In my stepson's case, he is also extremely talented at distraction, a skill he has developed as a defence mechanism to obfuscate his problems at school with literacy.

I think I have a very specific type of dyslexia that might not have been discovered yet.

When I'm hand writing something I often miss off the first letter of a word when the previous word ends with the same letter.

So, for instance, "I have large ars" (instead of "ears") It only ever happens when I'm hand writing things which to be fair isn't that often. And I instantly know that I've done it.

in all fairness, i appoliges for my last post.

didnt think before i typed.

this thread will make interesting reading into levels of dyslexia.

Andrew, no hard feelings mate.
just a touchy subject for me...

i find my issues are general spelling and mixing letters up as i type.

the normaly comes out as teh and stuff like that.
i try to sort it before hand but i also seem to miss read it and my mind corrects it for me.

I do find that my fingers sometimes type faster than my brain. One thing I find is, as Nobby, that a word will either merge with a previous word if it ends in the same letter, or it will start with the starting letter of the next word.

e.g. wnext word

Though in many, probably most cases, my internal censor will see it and I'll correct it before the spelling checker gets a chance.

I'm more likely to write a sentence and change my mind half way through and thereby miss complete words...

Marco, nobody was attacking you personally; I'm interested as to why it makes you so angry and upset...

Would you accept that if your spelling and grammar were better that it might make what you write easier for others to understand?

As the resident dyslexic... with it being that prevalent I was told I had this at primary school and then reassessed at secondary. its something I would gladly be rid of. I would rather be a lazy picked on grammar hater because I could at least do something about it.

You cannot believe the frustration it causes when you have to change a sentence because you cannot figure out how to spell a word and do not have a spell checker. What's even more frustrating is I know how the word should look, even with out a spell checker its not as if I don't know I haven't spelt something correctly.

For the most part society has become a little more accepting but its still pretty easy to make my self look incredibly uneducated and completely inept with in a few short sentences.

Any how, I just try to crack on with it, its not like its going to kill me. I did read a study some time back showing there was a correlation between autoimmune diseases and the occurrence of dyslexia

Sadly I have only seen snipits of the old studies and cannot find anything newer

http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/47/8/919

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0028393290901225

So basically people who are not proven to have dyslexia are ignorant or lazy? You're term of basic English may vary among all of us dyslexia or not.

This is a public forum of varying ages, education levels, nationalities and walks of life. Peoples English will different and may not be up to you're impeccable standards.

If people make the same reoccurring common mistakes maybe its simply a problem word etc that they have.
As long as its readable who cares that much? We are human and mistakes can and do happen.

This thread is not about dyslexia but more about peoples English on the forum and there reasons. Except for Andrew there is no excuse for it.

As a public forum we have to be flexible with everything to accommodate each other, otherwise we won't have a forum.
It will just be you and a selected few Andrew.

I much agree with barnacle about typing much quicker than thinking though. It is a common trait for me unfortunately in which my interpretation on the screen isn't quite what I am thinking.

I understand sections of Andrews argument of peoples branding of dyslexia but in the other hand people you are branding people who are not as ignorant or lazy.

Sam you do great and don't have any problems reading any posts. Would never distinguished your posts against others.

Now I'm thinking you're doing it on purpose....

@Marco - no offence taken and sorry if I caused any, this is a touchy subject.



My spelling is pretty shocking, and always has been, although I can generally tell when I've spelled something wrong and check it.

For reasons of idiocy I can't work out how to make IE underline words I misspell in forum replies, so I tend to have a Word document open in the background, to type in any suspect words.

At the moment it looks like this:





Possibly this is part of what annoys me - I am always aware that I will be judged not only on what I post, but also on the correctness of my post, so I make an effort.

Anyway, back on topic...a month or so ago I read The psychopath test, one of the closing chapters of which deals with the huge rise in childhood bipolar disorder diagnoses in the States, despite there being a large body of doctors who say that there's no evidence that the condition exists.

I don't doubt that dyslexia exists and is a very real problem for some people, but to what extent is it used to diagnose/excuse children who simply aren't very bright, don't pay attention in school, or aren't gifted with strong literacy skills?

With a PC when one is willing to put the time in and make multiple edits its possible to look almost normal. Give me a pen and paper and ask me to write a letter and I would make Andrew weep (with tears of laughter)

I'm my own worst enemy sometimes due to rushing though a post, not proof reading or just not giving a monkeys on occasion how legible my post may be to people with out the benefit of having English as a first language (which rightly so should be frowned upon)

I think correct use of language should be strived for, its nice to occasionally use "I'm dyslexic its not my fault" but chances are if I'm in front of a PC and have still spelt something incorrectly it is..... It all boils down to how much time I want to put in to checking and double checking and making sure the red lines have gone away for the correct reason.

Its a personal thing so perhaps how I interpret it differs wildly from others?

Intelligence is funny thing. It is very hard to quantify and yet is very recognisable. IQ tests don't really tell you much as anyone can be trained to get better scores. If someone who got an IQ score of 80 was schooled in how they work and how to improve got a score of 120 a week later has their intelligence suddenly gone from 20% below average to 20% above average? Quite obviously not. With that in mind we can therefore seperate intelligence and education into very independent things.

So what is raw intelligence and where does it come from? I believe that every human being is born with a predisposed level of intelligence. A cap, if you will. People who grow up and have that nurtured will excel at academic studies and appear more intelligent, but aren't necessarily more clever than someone with no academic qualifications. So how do you quantify raw intelligence? The reason IQ tests have been the benchmark for years is that they're designed to remove the necessity for academic study and try to measure how your brain can compute physical problems, i.e. if I turn pulley A anti-clockwise which way will pulley E move. As previously said though, because humans are very good at learning we can be taught to get a better IQ score without actually being any more intelligent.

Dyslexia obviously exists as a condition. Some people are born predisposed to not be able to arrange characters correctly. I think the percentage is a lot lower than claimed by a number of people. I read the figure 10% of the population are dyslexic in one form or another, which seems realistic. Dyslexia and raw intelligence obviously have no link whatsoever as I have met people who are very clever and yet can't write for shit. I have also met people who are intrinsically stupid and can't write either, blaming it on dyslexia. Reading and writing are entirely academic though. How intelligent you are plays a big role in how easy you find it to be taught to read and write.

Nobody likes to think of themselves as stupid, or even not up to average intelligence, but it stands to reason 50% of people are below average. I aware of my own limitations and that there are a number of people here who are more intelligent than I, although Jonny is not in their number. In today's politically correct society we're not allowed to label people stupid or simple despite 50% of the population being below average. It's a lot easier for society and the individual in question to give their stupidity a label and, unfortunately for genuinely dyslexic people, that label is often dyslexia.

So you have a small population who find it hard to write correctly and a much larger number who are too stupid or too lazy to write correctly. If you have a condition, be that dyslexia or you're born stupid then there's little you can do about that apart from try to improve despite the condition. If you're too lazy to learn the difference between lose and loose, bought and brought, or witness and whitness then rather than sympathy and understanding all you deserve is to be laughed at and have anything you say derided.

Having spent time with some dyslexic people I think it's easy to spot the difference in something written by someone with genuine dyslexia and someone who is lazy and/or stupid. It's not easy to quantify that as the differences are subtle, but they're there. Couple those with idiotic content of what is trying to be written and it becomes plain for all to see whether someone is intelligent but struggles with the written word or is simply a retard.

Surely the same can be said for many things. Dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia (sp?)

I understand that many of these broadly cover
A: Your brain knows what it wants to do
B: Your body can't do it, or the signal gets blurred along the way.

Whose idea of a joke was it to make 'dyslexia' such a difficult word to spell?

In all honesty I don't know alot about dysexia and how people are helped with it.
Is extra help offered as support? Even as an adult?

If those are your troublesome words Andrew your spelling is far from shocking

Brewster - agreed; It is generally quite obvious whether one of my students is dyslexic, bone-idle and unmotivated, or just thick. You just get to know. I can't really explain how.

The latest development was people pleading dyslexia as the reason for their generally poor level of ability all-round, even when their writing was perfectly fine.

Work that one out!

well, my spelling is shocking, i may not have an italian accent, but i was born there and English was not my first launage.

at school, i was classed dyslexic.

which really annoyed me as they knew the situation.

Jim - i would say if i could spell better ect then people may catch what i mean more ect

but it really does not bother me.

i just jumped the gun before hand

Calling somebody ignorant doesn't have to be seen pejoratively - we are all ignorant of some things, no one of us is a complete repository of all human knowledge.

I am almost completely ignorant of, to pick one example from many, the rules of cricket. I could remedy this, but I'm quite blissful in my ignorance, so instead I just don't post on topics that require a knowledge of cricket. If I did then I'm sure somebody knowledgeable would quickly take me to task over it.

For a lot of posts here, especially outside of the general chat forum, an ignorance of the basics of language, taught to us all from an early age, isn't a problem. If somebody is desperate to know what the yellow things on lorry wheels are then the answer, "There too show you when you're wheels nuts is coming lose", conveys the information and is understandable. However, when you're trying to engage in debate it doesn't help your case if your posts are littered with elementary mistakes.

Some people do suffer from dyslexia, I fully accept that, but a lot are too lazy to check for mistakes and too lazy to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

My standards are hardly impeccable, but I do think that on a public forum it's rude to care so little for your readers that you can't even make a tiny effort to ensure your post is readable.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a spelling/grammar thread, so we might have to steer back towards the topic now.

Marco - when you typed this, were you aware of the mistake?

Im dyslexia or was told i was at school .

My reading and spelling isnt great grammar is very poor. But dyslexia is more then just reading and spelling.

At around 12 i was found to have reading and spelling age of 7/8 year old! i struggled at school for a long time before and after ,and just copyied from friends in end . Teachers had no time for me as i couldnt keep up with the rest of class. I spent years of being kicked out of class due to my learning speed, which led to boredom then trouble making. I was predicted to fail all my exams and was told i would get help which never happened! my mum hired a private tutor to help me and i greatly improved on results but still wherent great. Also friends helped me in classes more then the teachers did in the end.

After school i couldnt get into any further learning due to my grades and dyslexia, still no one had time for my slow learning!
I have never used it as a excuse for poor spelling etc, and over the years spelling/reading has got better due to using more words and more often.

I can often add up VAT and times tables quicker in my head then some one with a calculator aswell as other wierd little things like that.

So does dyslexia exist who knows, but for me i hope the kids of today arent shown the treatment i was due to slow learning/thick/or dyslexia how ever its labeled.

This was the point I was trying to get to - how many people are told they are dyslexic, or believe they have dyslexia, for reasons that are nothing to do with it?

Marco, it would be interesting to know, for example, how much additional budget your school got for each 'dyslexic' child vs how much they got for each foreign language child.

Too early to tell, but my first impression is that you are not dyslexic. It seems you got off to a bad start at school and there was no-one sufficiently professional to help you to catch up. It happens a lot.

My lad has dyslexia. He was 'diagnosed' 18 months ago.

As for support, the school he was in was useless, so we moved him to another school for his last year of Primary school. He now gets 1:1 tuition 5 hours a week and he get's extra help from the support staff during normal lessons.

The Secondary school he's going to in September have a 'Learning Support' department which offers help for children with 'Special needs' (Dyslexia is classed as a special need).

We found the whole process of getting a diagnosis a terrible strain, the Education department (council) didn't want to know. We paid to get a test done and are now paying a shed load more for his final year at an Independant school.

His dyslexia manifests itself in slow reading, difficulty in writing and slow processing speed. But even with these 'afflictions' his spelling is very good and he still passed his 11+

Thats exactly the way I find it!

I will write a sentence, paragraph then find its a little jumbled not the way I orginal presumed I had written.

Then I will proof read to adjust but again I find its only a filter as I miss a few other errors.

After that you cant be bothered having to take 10 mins to fix something that done right first time takes 2 mins.

And as for intelligence at school it didnt do to well in English shock. All other subjects I done rather well. I now hold various qualifications in IT and electronics.

As for the old IQ test, I do struggle with some of the phrased terminolgy questions probably due to the time limit for each question as it jumbles I still manage to get roughly 120-128 Im not a genuis for sure but its not too bad.

nope.

im also workingat the same time so not paying full attention... lol

i bet they got a healthy amount mate.
but did i get extra help?

well.. no. I got bugger all.

then told i was doing crap.

helpful?
not really.

Ah, work - yes. I'd forgotten about that.

True dyslexics tend to be blind to their own mistakes. Given extraordinary circumstances, however, like working, that wouldn't be such a reliable indicator.

I think maybe Marco has hit on something - in recent times there has been a swing towards lazy labelling of people as dyslexic on the part of educators rather than taking responsibility for ensuring other causes for poor spelling/grammar performance are ruled out - mother tongue being a major one. Gets them out of a potential hole in terms of achieving results...

Talk to many parents of dyslexic children and they will tell you about the difficulty of getting their child diagnosed or having their condition taken seriously.
I can remember my cousin (who is now in his 50's) only being diagnosed because his parents knew he was intelligent and had enough money to be able to get some serious academic muscle to force his school to recognise it.
My wife had terrible problems getting her son's dyslexia recognised, partly because many dyslexic children connect so little with "normal" reading and writing activities that they quickly become bored and disruptive, hardly endearing them to teachers.
There is research to suggest that left/right brain dominance is linked to dyslexia - specifically that if neither hemisphere is dominant, the brain gets confused. My stepson is (or used to be) completely ambidextrous, which seemingly meant he couldn't recognise the order of letters because his mind couldn't distinguish between the direction of reading them. Part of the treatment he underwent at Reading Uni involved him wearing an eye-patch to encourage dominance of one eye/side. It seemed to work, although I would contend that he will never be the most academic child...

Enforcer i agree to if im dyslexia or not , but thats what the dyslexier guy told me when they done tests.

I was just left to get on with it , this was back in 90/91 so there wasnt really much more they could do about it. Maybe i was just a product of my slow learning and bad teaching.

Jim: Have you tried the old fish-and-chips caper on him?

It really sounds like you just got off to a slow start and there was no-one there to pick you up.

Yeah maybe , although the teachers wouldnt help me and this really effected my school life in terms of teaching.
Too the point i was told i could leave at just 15 and get a job , come back year later to sit my exams. This was partly because i had got fed up with school and was a big trouble maker. But my head of year wouldnt exclued anyone once we where in 4th year due to exams.
Thing is if anyone but me shouted etc, i would be the one who got kicked out of class! why i couldnt tell you, but in end few teachers got in trouble because of this.

In my eyes the school system failed me , but at same time it works for many .

Like Jim said its very hard to get them to recognise dyslexia in more then just labeling you with it.

And there's the problem - you can choose to avoid cricket threads. However, there are people who apply a similar blissful ignorance to correct application of language. It's their choice, but if they want to post on a public forum, their apathy (unlike your cricket aversion) will be obvious.

I also take pride in my spelling, grammar and punctuation, as I know that it makes my posts easier to read, especially for our overseas forum members. I also find it difficult to read posts with little or no punctuation and sloppy spelling.

The difference is that I'm happy to not let it bother me. You would probably resist strongly if someone started to force-feed you with cricket knowledge - the members that can't spell / won't spell are probably just as cheesed off with efforts to "improve" them. They too are "blissful in their ignorance" - why not just leave them to it, instead of preaching?

If you don't like what's written, or HOW it's written, don't read it. There's plenty of other stuff to read on here or elswhere.

Nigel, unless I've missed something, I don't think Andrew is preaching, he's expressing a point of view as part of a discussion about dyslexia. As far as my unhealthy appetite for this forum tells me, the "having a go" at people for poor grammar and spelling tends nowadays to be in individual threads and usually when those involved are hot under the collar about something else. There is remarkably little generalized pedantry on here, I'd say.

Jim - I agree, but look at the first two paragraphs of Andrew's starting post - he's started this thread becuase he's pulled Jonny up on his spelling and he openly admits to having "a bit of history" with spelling and grammar on here.

I too dislike sloppy writing, but I'm not bothered enough to question people's claims of dyslexia, nor do I go out of my way to assert my superior spelling abilities on those that can't or won't meet my standards.

In the greater scheme of things, it's not that important. One of the reasons that there's remakably little pedantry on here is that the Mod and Admin teams have established a culture of tolerance of varying grammatical skills, rather than demanding grammatically perfect grammar on every post.

It takes all sorts - there are people on here with great mechanical knowledge of cars and thankfully, they don't ram their superiority down the throats of us lesser mortals. I don't imagine that the non-spellers amongst us are enthralled with attempts to rectify their deficiencies either.

I think the humour and irony/sarcasm is pretty blatant, though. As I said, it was the "intro" to this thread, which - in the best tradition of this forum - is designed to stir up some lively debate.

I haven't seen Andrew - or anyone else for that matter - being pedantic for some time other than in self-mocking terms. If that is thanks to the mods, then well done mods!

My spelling on here has got better due to my use of Swype on my phone, so now all the words are spelt correctly but they are not necessarily the words I intended
Swype is a sort of handwriting recognition system for the keyboard. Anyone who ever used that feature on an apple Newton will understand some of the pitfalls

I am not dyslexic but a very bad speller and can't say I put the effort in for forum posts unless I am writing a guide. I am generally lazy and reserve my energy for spell checking of work presentations and job applications.

Swype has a mind of its own. My wife is called Caroline, but Swype often calls her Charline. Imagine the fun I have explaining why I'm texting my undying love to some bint called Charline. Another favourite is "darkling" for darling. Swype is quite clever, but can be infuriating!

Ever heard of the two dyslexic bank robbers that tried to rob the bank?

They ran in and shouted, "Air in the hands motherstickers, this is a f%*kup!!"

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Well done Mrcoa your first word spelled right you thick git!!

Most of you will know me as someone who cares deeply not only about spelling, grammar, and punctuation but also about the logical presentation of a question, a thesis, or a response... indeed, I have an MSc in what is basically 'how to spell words that don't exist'. I've spent a long time looking at words, their evolution, their use, and their misuse - mainly as a way to correct them in certain electronic forms.

Some points for consideration. I use 'I' throughout to indicate any particular person who might display the behaviour I'm commenting on without reference to any named individual - not necessarily that I do it myself!

1) There's a difference between 'unable to spell' and 'unable to select the correct homophone' - words (or groups) that have the same pronunciation irrespective of meaning. The classics there are 'there, they're, their' or 'your, you're'. I strongly suspect that the latter group are not helped by automated spelling checkers since they do not, as a rule, consider context; if I try and write one when I mean another, and I get it close enough for the spell-checker to accept it, I will never know that I got it wrong.

2) Punctuation and capitalisation has become in recent years apparently optional. Spacing sometimes goes the way of the pear, too... I believe (but cannot prove) that this is directly due to the number of portable writing systems - phones, mainly, of which the writing is an inconsequential part of the design and yet is such a major part of their use case. Such devices become the major use of writing for significant numbers of people, but rather than encouraging traditional styles they go out of their way to prevent it: to type 'don't' instead of 'dont' on my Nokia phone requires seven extra keystrokes. There's no wonder I'm going to be lazy.

3) I believe that it is incumbent on me, if I want to make a point, or say, ask for help with a problem, to do it in a way which makes it as simple as possible for someone to respond to me. If I choose to write without benefit of punctuation or ignoring case or generally accepted grammar, or not bother to check my spelling, I place an extra level of effort on the reader. Instead of a simple parse of the sentence, at each point where I have introduced a mistake he has to stop and try alternative meanings. It slows him down and offers many more chances to misunderstand me. It also suggests that if I don't care about his time and understanding, why would I show any more care in my interpretation of his answer.

4) I have seen studies and surveys which suggest people read far far fewer books than even as recently as ten or twenty years ago. There are reports of people who have not picked up a book since they left school; library use has been falling for years. I can't help wondering how, if people aren't exposed to words, they ever learn new words, or indeed how the words they already know might be better used. I accept I'm unusual - I can expect to read better than two hundred books in a year. I'd encourage anyone to read anything - the more, the merrier. Doesn't matter whether it's technical or trash; thud and blunder or the classics; science fiction or the classics. I firmly believe that the simple act of reading - and enjoying the words - will improve my use of the language both in spoken and written forms.

Point 4 is definitely true for me. I always joke that the last book I read was Stig of the Dump

But in all seriousness I do not read anywhere near as much as I should, but perhaps thats just me. I don't watch soaps, I don't care for chat shows or general entertainment. But I love reading random facts, tales of old or stuff about cars.

For me reading is one of the best, most enjoyable things you can do - and by using a public library you can do it for free.

I couldn't contemplate not having anything to read, it's almost like I have an insatiable hunger for it, I even took a book to the AGM knowing full well i'd be bladdered from start to finish (almost).

Words evolve though, trying to maintain something and constrain something is always going to be an uphill fight.

Lets all be honest here, out of a fair few languages the English language is very poorly put together with words that sound the same but can have completely different meanings when applied in context. We have words with silent letters for no good reason as far as I can see. If we could start again and set out to make it a little more simple it all it would be a much better more robust and easer to learn language.
If some one set out a programming language like we have developed the English language you can be sure no sod would use it.

Summarised from my dissertation, Sam: English has at least three major incompatible languages from which it has derived words or roots - Latin, Germanic, and Norse. Add Celtic and Greek, plus just about every other language where the British had influence or were influenced by including some unscripted ones.

As an old acquaintance of mine puts it:


Research from Google indicates that up to 1950, there were just over half a million English words. Since then it's more than doubled to over a million.

One reason for silent letters is thought to be that medieval copyists either to imitate the French spelling, or because they got paid by the letter, not the word...

I'm sure I read somewhere* that silent letters normally represented how the word used be pronounced - spelling being a rather informal affair for most of the history of written English.

* In best Ufologist tradition I can't remember the source right now. Although I do recall that Bill Bryson's biography of Shakespeare talks about 16th/17th century English pronunciation at some length.

You make an excellent point, Sam: no language ever remains the same, it evolves constantly. There are statistics (that I have not to hand) about what percentage of words fall into disuse every decade, replaced and complemented by some that perform the same function and others that describe new phenomena.
When we (and I most definitely include myself) complain about others' use of language, we are talking about the language of right now, or possibly the language of a few years ago, because, as a middle aged, middle class white man, I doubt I have my finger on the pulse of the English of "now". Innit, blud.
I would be very surprised if, assuming we reach a ripe old age, we are not shaking our heads and tutting at the appalling standards of English even more so than now. We'll probably also smell of cabbage and wee, but that's a side issue.

Barnacle is also right that the many relatively new writing devices we use actively discourage the use of "correct" language. It is more a measure of my pedantry that I text using language as accurate as I can than my ability to communicate effectively with such devices. Then again, when my Dad was living in the Antarctic in the early 60s, he was only allowed to send 100 words of morse code a month back to the Falklands for forwarding as a telegram to family. You can bet he and his colleagues cut out any unnecessary words, much like today's texting.

In my experience, English is much easier than, say, French, to learn badly and much harder to learn well. By way of an example, a typical French article will contain around 30% more words than its English translation. English is, ironically, the language of le mot juste.

French, like English, contains many anomalies of grammar pronounciation and punctuation, but the answer to these is evidently not to synthesise a new, entirely regular language as you can tell by attending a nearby meeting of your local Esperanto society.

L L Zamenhof accuses you of sarkasmo, Jim...

Must be true. Imagine people pronouncing 'strength', 'caught', 'queue', in that way

I am a coping (hard word to spell looked it up to make sure) dyslexic. This means (posible misinterpreted word) everything I type is very time consuming (easy word got right but checked). Often I might forget a word so each sentance. (Oh got one)( doh mean forgot oneword) has to be checked. Some times a sentance could be merged with the next or missed so each paragraph must checked (should be must be checked) It is rear (no that's back mean rere dam rare) that a sentence would be backwords. I hope (hopping and hoping aweful words) that helps you understand the difficulty we have.

You said homo.

You've got me giggling too, now!

It is just about impossible to edit on a phone. sorry new post. I missed a bit.
I read a lot but find I often reread a line or miss a line or a single word. Thus it makes no (bad word comming up off to check it) sense (no c).


edit: and again! So it takes me much longer.

Interesting. It must be a real pain.

I am curious: How do you experience this difficulty? I mean, is it a problem of poor memory? Or is it that you expect to be able to work out spellings as you write, but find there is no logic to it? Or what?

Copy n paist

I'd take a *guess* based on what Jef has written, that he's writing phonetically and trying to recognise errors as he goes. I could be completely wrong.

I usually think I know it. Only I don't. A lot of the time words are just daft. It is just a funy shape (shap shape?) Missed words are worse on phone or hand writing as I cannot keep up. I touch type but often get the spac esin themi dle of words. (Spaces in the middle of words.

I'm really glad this subject came up and the frank debate from many sides of the spectrum is, at the least, enlightening. In some people's lives it is still a taboo, especially amongst those parents who understandably want to believe their child is, if not perfect, well..."normal" [subject for another thread perhaps]. I have kept a copy of a letter sent to me by parents of two talented pupils from the past [both came out of Oxford with 1sts] who stated "there is nothing wrong with **** , he/she doesn't suffer from dyslexia and I would be grateful if this was never discussed again". I have always got on very well with the family and still do, but it's not the only example of defensiveness I have encountered.

Then there is the issue of incredulity - I can do it so why can't you/he/she do it, it's so easy.....I find it so strange that we are either "naturally intelligent" as Brewster puts it, to make us act that way, or educated/brought up/informed in that way. I feel this is an issue of tolerance.

I have a pupil at school just now who, in my opinion, is unquestionably dyslexic and as a result maybe has got themselves into scrapes in the past and is unpopular with some of my colleagues as they appear to be lazy. Ok I'm lucky in a 1-1 job that there is "quality" time in the lesson and I can do my best to address these opinions of mine - but it takes time.

I agree with many posters on here who have bemoaned their lack of empathy from schooling - it's not surprising they've been turned off. Therein lies a major flaw in our education system, in that it concentrates too much on general results and league tables rather than the wider issue of including people who learn things in different ways and at different speeds. To me that is a firm and positive contribution to society.

I've developed a couple of theories about the big D but I can't reference any of them or back them up with evidence that I've laid my hands on so I'm off to have dinner and put on my suit of armour in case they're put to the test and shot down in flames

in case??



Let us know when you get back.

I've had some excellent tachers who teach in dyslexic (put a capital I in in fffs) edit: friendly ways /edit and everyone learns. That's often not spoon feading. one at gcse biology taught as follows.
friday inform class of subject for mondays test. monday do test. rest of week teach class main points of issue and 1 to 1 with others

lowest mark was an A in that class.
@Neil yes correct as I go but it's recursive.

I use a lot of numonics, hey spelt right! Rhymes and songs. There seems no logic to a lot of words. It is all constant effort, learning words still at 28. Last week I lernt assigned!

I had thought it might be. I wonder if there's a way to use my work in correcting spelling errors to build a noise model to autocorrect 'you'? I'll have to think about that - I suspect it would need a *huge* body of written work and would probably be specific to an individual. Hmm.

(I'm not suggesting you need correcting; just thinking out loud here. My dissertation shows how you can correct text if it's mangled in a recognisable way, and how you can automatically recognise words that you don't know).

For what it's worth, Jef, I find I often make mistakes while typing - not in spelling, but in starting the wrong word or phrase - but will backspace within a couple of letters often without even realising I've done it. Touch typing means my fingers know what to type, but they don't always listen to my brain!

But my errors very day today. I can pass as human some times. I can mis-spell a few differnt ways in a few sentences.

Come on now jef you can do better than that!

Interesting - just found this doctoral thesis: http://web.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/research/recentphds/pedler.pdf - looks like she uses very similar statistical methods to mine.

<edit> Just a note to say that of *all* the research papers on spelling correction I read when I was doing my dissertation, I found not one that did not have a spelling mistake...

I can assure everyone that having spent a pleasant evening over a few jars with Jack he is far from human

Ilvanbbonivccee pycoocppk

I found it really easy to read!

Had to write down your first word though Brian, I would never have thought of it even.

Jef and Sam, do either of you have the left/right confusion thing?

And is it a fair observation that neither of you have any great difficulty in reading/comprehension?

I can follow a passage and draw conclusions. My left and right are in a constant battle.
also green and blue.
see that blue farrari is it a 599?
No but the green one is.

No issues at all with reading, If im reading something technical I need to make key notes as I have issues retaining details for more than a few seconds.
Left and rights are again no issue, reading aloud is troublesome as I stumble over words even paragraphs. If I make an active effort to calm my self and make sure I am happy with the material im presenting im better.
As I have to do presentations now its something I have got better at with experience.

I have spent my entire life building coping mechanisms, its second nature now so I almost forget the checks I put in place to help me.

I fall out of range of the classic presentation of dyslexia, its just limited to spelling and numbers.

Thanks, both.

Even with too many 'b's in the first word.

1. In my experience the remembrance or even fear that something might not come out in the correct order stays with one - it is the enemy of relaxation.

2. Experience is a coping mechanism - perhaps needing more than frequent repetition to drive a point deep into the long term memory as the short term finds it hard to grasp the pattern.

3. Coping mechanisms become habitual and are the survival kit, and yes things become less fraught as the cognitive brain takes on long hours of duty.

4. Sam, I've no problem with your opinion but I would argue that there is no such thing as a classic dyslexic. It's too convenient a pigeonhole and doesn't imply a generous spectrum. One is what one is and for me the ideal is to recognise it and learn to cope in spite of the occasional Molatov cocktail that might be tossed in your direction.

Some do have real difficulty with left/right labels, an issue I regularly find with pianists.

Sorry...need to pause!

Your right but, please don't make the assumption I think every one fits in to a nice box, by the very nature of my post I prove that I do not.

When I said classic presentation, I was referring to the check box questions the tests ask and the one's the specialists ask. This does not mean I to say every one presents in the same manner. There is no true/yes/no/false with cognitive learning disability's just rangers of typical presentation.

Its a deeply personal thing, I have not suggested others present this way, just how I present and giving others the benefit of my experience.

In my opinion, some people just haven't been able to learn how to spell, are too lazy or haven't been taught properly.

This has been covered up by the word Dyslexic and is used by everyone as an excuse or reason.

Genuine dyslexics have a hard time due to lazy/thick/ill taught people claiming to have the same condition.

We all make mistakes, some people can't learn, others won't.

For example, for years, I'd spelt swap as swop, as I thought that was the correct spelling, until I was told it wasn't. I've always made sure I don't make that mistake again and now spell it correctly.

Not enough teaching is being done these days by parents and/or teachers regarding the differences between words such as your and you're, there and their, etc.

I never really pull anyone up regarding their spelling on here as none of us are perfect, but everyday words that are used in the wrong context, such as the above can be annoying to read.

Does anyone think the way of teaching phonetics is wrong?

My 5 year old grandson has been taught by my family and I, how to say and spell words and letters properly and has been doing well.

Until he started school! His spelling and writing, etc have taken a dip due to him trying to learn phonetically, when he already knows the correct word or letter needed, but is getting confused.

For the record, I'm not having a go at anyone on here, just stating my opinion of it all.

Anyone that knows me knows I sound pretty 'common' I did have a Mum who was prepared to sit and teach me/make me learn the basics in reading, writing and numbers though, as well as attending a good primary school. I learnt nothing worthwhile after primary school and nearly everything else has been self taught through reading books, etc.

Purveyors of phonics claim it works better than 'traditional' methods but I see two flaws in their claim: firstly that the originators of the process were using US English, which differs from UK English orthography largely because of Webster's attempts to rationalise it in his 'An American Dictionary of the English Language' in 1828. As a result, US English is somewhat more phonetically spelt than UK English.

The second reason is that it fails, as T points out, if you already know how to read...

My anecdotal evidence is similar: I was taught to read almost as soon as I could talk, at two or so; before I went to infant school I had read, among others, Robinson Crusoe (in a children's abridged edition), A Chinese Childhood, and was steadily ploughing through my father's collection of pulp westerns - J T Edson, Louis L'Amour, and 'Sudden'. The ladybird series had long been discarded, though I retain a fond memory of 'The Green Umbrella' which I still recall included for some reason a family of rabbits taking a seaside holiday...

I cannot claim fully to have understood many of the themes included, but it certainly came as a shock when I found I was suddenly expected not to be able to understand anything more complex than 'See Spot. Spot is a dog. See Spot run.'

The same problem persisted throughout my schooling: I was reading a new book every couple of days, whatever I could get my hands on ('Grey's Anatomy' was a surprise, and even the Children's Britannica and a 20-volume series on the world's animal species didn't slow me down too much) while being expected in English lessons to stumble over pages read out loud by one pupil at a time from 'A Kestrel for a Knave', 'The Merchant of Venice', or 'Lord of the Flies'. Since most of the victims pupils had no great interest, nor any concept of pace or intonation, this was an intensely boring procedure for all concerned and probably killed any interest in reading for 95% of all concerned, including the teacher. I survived largely be reading something else during those lessons, occasionally being discovered doing when I was perhaps a little slow locating the exact paragraph when it was my turn to 'do English'.

Meh. My fault, I suppose, for being born into a school system which was just starting to play with the idea of 'keep the little dears happy rather than encouraging them to learn'; I was alienated and unhappy through seven years of secondary schooling, a major reason why I did not at that time undertake tertiary education.

Re Sam [as I started the post last night] Well I put my post in a misleading way as I hadn't intended to imply that. My bad as they say

I'm interested in

a] the way the eyes deal with light and shade in close proximity, e.g.driving between an avenue of trees in bright sunlight, or flash photography.

b] the way the brain interprets these signal.

Is the eye machinery itself different from person to person or, as my son-in-law for example insists, or just subject to the brain handling the messages?

Contrasts of light, I noticed, when sun shines on a panel radiator, produce a shimmer effect between the raised and the shaded [indented] parts What if the eye found it tricky to adjust between the light and shade satisfactorily? We are warned on news bulletins that reports contain flash photography [a courtesy for epileptics I understand] .

I have often found that "movement " of print or musical notation occurs with students, especially when the letters or symbols are closely spaced. Now we already know that enlarging print is a coping mechanism, thereby increasing the amount of space around the characters. We also use tinted overlays or coloured paper to read from as it presumably reduces the glare and therefore the contrast in light.

I remember being taken to Amsterdam on a big birthday and going to the Van Gogh museum and particularly enjoying the experience because the paintings were so well spaced out. Many such exhibitions are cramped so that a painting you are observing is being distracted from your attention by those surrounding.

Affected students who are slow learners are sometimes guilty of not making heroic efforts to process what they see on a page because it's such a bloody effort and they are aware of a need to pace themselves over a day. There are some tell-tale signs in music score reading - as well as left/right issues there are up/down ones; not realising that a note has stayed in the same place; reading a note placed on one line and playing it as if it were the note on the line above/below; blinking or staring; a strong desire to memorise [a coping mechanism]; poor preparation of something apparently starighforward.

Some of these could be attributable to laziness you say - I agree one or two idle jacks will always slip through the net - but mostly I find perseverance wins through and an acceptance from the student that there are ways around it. Just as important are the strengths of that person that have developed in spite of the reading issue. I have never failed to be impressed by these.

What if this is not to do with reading/spelling but with particular types of memory?

There are some erudite contributors on here [you know who they are] who are mines of information or argue coherently through a long thread and give a very good impression of fluid recall of the information presented to them.

You could argue that short-term memory defers to the stronger long-term memory in some people. So the ability to retain a pattern is more difficult at first and has to be repeated many times before accessing long-term status. I would be interested to know if people who empathise with this also have the ability to pore over long-term projects in great detail or have the patience to laboriously work out a knotty problem. Perhaps a sort of compulsive ability.....

It's refreshing to see some one go to such an effort for there students, I can assure you I was classed as a hindrance and something to be delt with in lesson rather than some one spending a little time helping me the way you help your students. Hats off to you on that one.

My short term memory is horrific to the point where I lost my keys, I was sure I had locked them in the car and could remember seeing them in the boot, called aa to open the car only to find the keys not In the boot but on the floor where I was working, I was that convinced they were in the boot I didn't even check needless to say every one was very impressed!

I think you've made your point.

You can attribute that to lack of coffee and typing on an iPad, corrected

Like Barnacle, I was reading aged two and had joined the local library. Once I went to infant school my method of coping with English lessons was to decide that I had done my work for the day and walk home.

I never did understand how my mum somehow always seemed to meet me on the way and escort me back to school.

I too read everything I could get my hands on, any books at home (and there were lots) were there for all to read, much to the dismay and horror of various Grammar School English teachers.
Dismay, because it meant that there was a good chance I had already left the concepts shown in the set books behind, and spent almost all of my time bored out of my skull, with obvious problems for the teacher.
Horror too, because in those days some books were considered totally unsuitable for the under 21s to pick up - much less read. This was a time before the famous Lady Chatterley's Lover trial.


In my time at school the emphasis was still on (literally) beating education into children and in the case of my senior school, turning out good servants of a no longer existing empire, and getting as many pupils into Oxford and Cambridge to satisfy the headmaster's vendetta aginst the local public school.

Small wonder that I too fought hard not to go to university at that time, instead choosing to find a company who would pay me to get equivalent qualifications.

Years later, in the 1980's when my son was at school many education authorities (including Hampshire) were saying that there was no such thing as dyslexia, only stupid children, so at least some progress has been made.

I am convinced that a large part of the problems some people have with language stems from poor teaching due to preoccupation with school league tables.
This also works aginst the interests of the brightest children too: the system is geared around the average child and those at either end of the spectrum suffer.

I wasn't ever an avid reader, but I could read before I went to school. Fortunately, in those days they hadn't introduced weird phonetic counter-measures, so I survived very well. I always found it offensive subsequently when schools put pressure on parents not to teach their preschool kids to read. "That's our job, and we prefer it if you don't interfere."

It's offensive because it presumes that their method is better and preferable by default, while all along many kids are doing fine, thank you very much, with traditional methods. It's the schools that need to adapt, not the kids.

I more or less assumed that everyone else in my class was fine with reading and writing too, so I grew up with no impression of dyslexia at large, but it could have been there - I just didn't notice.

I have never understand quite why it is a good idea to teach down to the lowest common denominator, or even the median.

I shall be doing the best I can - with the full approval of her parents - to ensure that Granddaughter can read before she starts school - ideally trilingually. Mind you, she's in a country where English is *taught* rather than assuming it will be acquired somehow by osmosis.

Never mind dyslexia, what about grammar?

I do suffer from my brain going quicker than I type then re-readIng things and noticing that I missed things.

I also tend to miss things when I read them back after typing, but yet when I come back an hour later I can clearly see the errors.Just the way my brain is wired. My spelling and grammar is poor but I blame that on poor teaching/teachers in the 1970's/80's

Saying that my logical abilities are outstanding. Give me a programming language and I am like a pig in the proverbial.

And I am sure that cases of poor teaching /understanding are put down to dyslexia. Schools get extra funding for special need children.

I imagine that Andrewr is most likely to be either high functioning autistic or to have aspergers.

She's outside in the garden, enjoying the sun.

Sorry, I of course meant to say 'I have never understanded...'

I Am Dyslexic, although it effects my reading more so than my writing.

Sure my spelling is bad, while writing posts I am constantly checking my spelling on google and to be honest writing posts takes a fair bit of time for me and sometimes I end up not posting due to the time involved!

I've just had re-read the above paragraph 5 times because I couldn't get the the end without my brain crashing!

I sometimes find myself reading lines over and over, as the info just doesn't go in!

It effects people in different ways.

I didn't do well at school due to the above but that doesn't make one any less capable, infact quite the opposite!

I think schools need to address this issue earlier to give people like me a better start! I left school with shocking grades, which in the short run gives you little prospects! (Oh no what college course can I do etc)

For me its all about being practical and creative, thats what I'm good at. Sit me down and ask me to do a maths and english exam and I'll fail big time!

However this doesn't go to say that I couldn't get an A in an exam, I know I could. But its the way I was taught.

The current state school structure requires you to sit in this clinical environment hour after hour listening, writing and reading. Thats my worst nightmare. There was no possible way for me to learn and take stuff in!

Let me give you and example. When I was a child I was massively into birds (not the female kind that came later)
I could of named every single bird in the British isles, weather it was the male or female of that species and about 90% through their call alone. I could tell you what bird made a perticular nest, I could tell you which bird layed that egg etc etc

Now that isn't the work of a brain that is incablable of learning, it was how I was learning.
I was looking at bird books, seeing a photo of that bird and reading the simple name underneath. Going out to nature reserves and going about the whole thing in a practical way.
I was living an breathing the learning process.
Thats how my brain it wired up to work, not stuck in a dingy classroom looking cross eye'd at a page of text.

I haven't actaully got time to carry this post on, its already taken me 1 hour and I got to go to work!

Anyway, food for thought...

Mart

What seriously pissed me off ws attending a "teacher"-parent evening for Ms RK's little girl.

I challenged her "English" teacher why he didn't correct her spelling, punctuation, grammar and use of words such as "c oz" and "woz". He informed me that it was the content of her writing that was important, not the manner in which it was presented.

When I pointed out I would reject an illiterate CV out of hand he said very little. He said even less when I asked him why the French teacher religiously corrected spelling, punctuation and grammar in her French homework and questioned if this meant it was more important for her to communicate on paper in French rather than English.

Frankly, it appears to me there are people out there who would not appear semi-literate, or dyslexic, if they'd received decent teaching at school.

However in his favour, apparently he was "cool" and drove a Smart car.

Just a small addage to the thread does being left handed increase your chances of haveing dyslexia?

I am a leftie? http://biggsuccess.com/2011/04/01/left-h...sful-leaders-2/

That all sounds pretty normal to me - at least, well within normal limits. I wouldn't claim that I am dyslexic, but I have always found it hard work to read a book. I have a frustrating tendency to see the words rather than the meaning. It has taken me a large part of my adult life to work through that problem.

But it isn't dyslexia. It is an inordinate level of self-consciousness when trying to read a book.

Regarding left-handedness, etc. Until about ten years ago I needed to use my left ear to converse by telephone. If I used the right ear I felt completely disconnected with the person I was talking to. Over the past few years I find that has gone. I can use either ear equally well.

Today's Puzzler!

My job specially involves making reasonable adjustments for dyslexics on behalf of my organisation. All of the above examples you've listed fall within typical signs of dyslexia. As a condition it varies in both degree and presentation from person to person and whilst there are common traits, it's difficult to list specific signs of dyslexia.
However, mixing up similar sounding words, not spelling their mistakes phonetically, having short term memory problems are all relatively common and not a lack of education, ignorance or intelligence.

I'm afraid the ignorance here isn't on the part of dyslexics.

I openly admitted my ignorance of the details of dyslexia when I started this thread, but are you suggesting that every single person who has countered criticism of their spelling/grammar with, "I'm dyslexic" was telling the truth?

That sounds like an ignorance of basic statistics and human nature to me.

I am inclined to agree. The behaviour of the teacher was appalling - but seems to be standard.

The argument that - irrespective of *spoken* English - standard written English improves clarity and decreases ambiguity is somehow ignored.

An interesting English language test I found on t'interwebs - intended, for graduate level students in general but not easy even for me: I missed one correct answer on each section and four on the last (though I claim that there was ambiguity!). However, it's reassuring to think that it thinks that I'm proficient... I did all the sections to see what it was like; it would have been quicker to have started with the hardest. There is at least one spelling mistake in there; I think it's obligatory.

http://www.uefap.com/test/index.htm

Barnacle

To resolve this whole issue, regarding the spelling and grammer on the forum could a simple spell check, grammer adjustment tool be applied into the forums script?

This would remove the need for certain members to be critical on the matter?

My gut feeling is yes based on my own experiences with students - there is of course a crossover when people do some things with LH, others with RH. My own experience which I can at least vouch for is that while I kick a ball, shoot arrow from bow, fire rifle and can play some tt with left hand [or foot], I'm right-handed for writing.

Main annoyance is in a heated discussion I get words jumbled up, I have to keep really calm or have a glass or two of alcohol to loosen up. Writing I can control because I can see it afterwards - the discipline/coping mechanism is to try and read it from your head if you get my gist.

So in general I try not to fall out with Mrs Ed.....

Firefox and IE both have spell-checkers, either as standard, or as free add-ons

Jonny, I'm sure after reading this thread [and credit to the OP for that] a lot more of us can live with it.

True, but it would take less time having it directly on the forum tools

Don't talk rot, of course I'm not suggesting that. As far as this subject is concerned I suspect I'm somewhat less ignorant than you.

Dyslexia is very common (some studies suggest that upto 10% may suffer from it to a greater or lesser degree)

Whilst not every person incapable of spelling is dyslexic, I'd personally be very wary of calling persons that claim to be so, liars.

So does a dictionary!

This is again, an example of laziness.

I wanted to know what a word meant or how it was spelt when I was a kid, my Mum used to go and make me look it up in the dictionary and that helped me to learn words, spellings and meanings.

Another example is the 'times table'. How many people learnt this? How many people are taught it now?

Jonny,

As Nigel says - there are automated spelling tools on both IE and Firefox[1], and they operate in real time as you type (when you hit a space, they will indicate if they don't like the previous line), but they suffer from a common fault in that (a) they are generally incapable of identifying a word which is correct but in the wrong place (e.g. 'there' instead of 'their') and (b) on the words they do recognise as incorrect, their tendency is to offer words based on an error model which in no way matches that of your good self or that of other dyslexics.

The problem is that a standard spelling checker either assumes you can spell but can't type, and so attempts to swap in, say, adjacent keys from the keyboard to create the suggested word list, or it assumes you can type but you can't spell, and it tries to find words that *sound* similar to what you wrote.

The data I have seen suggest that with dyslexics, the errors are both more subtle and more complex - in particular, it has highlighted missing repeated syllables (e.g. 'rember' for 'remember' - Firefox offers 'ember', 'member', and couple of others, but not 'remember'). They don't cope well with run-on words, where a space or punctuation may be missed, nor with words broken by an embedded space, and they can't do anything about grammar errors or missing complete words.

There are spelling correctors intended to deal specifically with these kinds of errors, but they're not something that could be implemented behind the scenes on a forum; they're far too processor-intensive and they're probably dependent on training for a particular user.[2]

That said - Sam's spelling improved no end when he got into the habit of using the checker, though naturally he still gets some homophones wrong (Sam, that's *not* a criticism, just an observation!) and his writing is much easier to read than it was when he first started using the forum. Your own spelling in this thread, while it has had one or two glitches, has not been bad at all.

What I will repeat (with my mod hat on) is an implicit forum rule: it is not acceptable behaviour to pick on a forum user on the grounds of their spelling or grammar. If it happens, tell a mod.

[1] Firefox flags its own name; it prefers 'Firefly'.
[2] If you're bored, my dissertation describes the similar but not identical problem of identifying errors in optical character recognition systems. They too find errors which confuse standard spelling correctors, and I came up with a way to isolate such errors and statistical methods to correct them; I don't take any account of grammar, though.
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk/ocr/Dissertation.pdf