Computers make us lose touch with spelling

Recently, I was called back to the army to serve my annual required stint. In life, we spend one-third of our time sleeping. In army, we spend one-third of our time waiting. It is quite a perpetual game of waiting; but don't get me wrong - we do a lot of rushing too. You see, we rush to wait then wait to rush again. Loop it and you can appreciate the entire picture. Anyway, I digress. While we were waiting and about to fall off the fringe of sanity, a friend and I decided to play hangman. It is that game where we take turns to come up with a word for the other person to guess. For instance, if I have the word "miscreant" in mind, I would illustrate the 9 letters like this: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The person guessing will choose a letter and the correct letters will be written out. After each wrong guess of a letter or word, a stroke will be added to the hangman-to-be. When the hangman is finally completed, it is game over for the guesser. (If you feel like playing the game, check out e.g. http://www2.20q.net/hang.pl - this site looks real neat to me.) I used to pride myself at having a decent competency level of English. While playing this game, I realized that I have lost touch with spelling. I used to be quite a good speller. While providing words for my friend, I was embarrassed several times because I misspelled the words I chose for him to guess. As the cliché goes, I would find a hole to hide if I was an ostrich. Upon reflecting, I realize that I have been relying too heavily on computers. For practically all browsers and word processors, a misspelled word would be marked with a red underline. While this makes rectification of any error very convenient, it unfortunately is a bane too. You see, when I correct each word, I would immediately zoom in to the correction that is most obviously correct. If I have been spelling a word wrongly all the while, I would still be none the wiser. And in my usual haste, any slip would tend to feel inconsequential and relegated to the back of my mind. So how would I ever learn? As a result of this incident, I am resolving to take spelling more seriously from now on. Instead of simply right clicking on a misspelled word and choosing the most obviously correct word, I shall instead do manual correction. And if it turns out that I really cannot spell the word, I shall endeavor to find the right spelling and commit it to memory. I hope this post resonates with at least some of you and you would make the same commitment as me to strengthen your grasp on spelling. Cheers!