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I have to say, I adore spell checkers. I'm good at grammar, but my spelling is... lacking. I can spell short words, but give me a long word and I'm dead. I also make a lot of stupid mistakes when I type fast, so it's nice to have them there. I compulsively proofread, though, so it's not like I'm not paying attention to my writing.

Personally I like spell-checkers.

As human beings, we aren't able to know how to spell every single word completely correct. Personally I'm good at spelling, but sometimes we can't know everything. And while proof-reading is still necessary, spell-checkers are just another step to making your piece better.

If I need to spell-check something, I usually use dictionary.com. That way, I can also be sure it's the right word, in case I'm unsure.. sweatdrop

Like most things, though, spell-checkers can be good or bad. It all depends on how you use it. A couple of my friends on Gaia are from Europe, and English is not their native language. To help themselves learn, they use spell-checkers and dictionary tools for Firefox. That doesn't mean they always get everything right, but it does help quite a bit.

I only use them if I'm doing a report and I want to make absolutely sure that everything is spelled correctly.

The human brain far outstrips the spellcheckers though. Only use spellcheck for individual words. I could say:

Merry hat hey lid tell lam, ids fleas woes wide has know.

Spellcheck would tell me it had no errors, but you know that that's incorrect.

Personally, I love spell checkers. They help me catch what little mistakes my eyes happen to miss during a proof reading. As Shinobi said they are not one hundred percent accurate so one shouldn't simply toss proof reading out of the window, but they're hardly a bane. Those who use the spell checkers and still make mistakes will soon, hopefully, learn that they aren't all you can rely on.

All in all I wouldn't do without them.

Yeah. Some people just plain aren't good spellers. I'm one of them. Even if I try hard, some things are still misspelled. But, I've noticed on some spell and grammar checks, that it will advise me to change something, when if you read through it, the change would make no sence at all. And there are plenty of spell checkers that try to correct, let's say, names of anime characters because they aren't in the dictionary. With MS Word, you can add the words, but some you have to register in order to add. Like if you go to taintedink.com/forums, you cna choose to have your work spell checked, and it often annoys me because I'll haev to press ignore 20 times in one thing. It can support lazyness, but if your like me, you'll notcie some problems will be let go. Personaly, I have pretty good grammar, adn alot of times these spell chekers that acctualy do grammar will correct things that don't need to be corrected, and once I had it say that it was a possible question when it wasn't any where near one. Over all, you should still try your best. The spell checkers will only help. But personaly, I'm one of those people who love seeing if I can misspell a word so badly, that the spell checker knows and says that it's wrong, but has no correct spelling for it. I don't know why. It's weird, I know.

Spellcheckers suck. Word XP drives me mad because the spellchecker doesn't 'recognise' a lot of my basic vocabulary. At other times, it misses crucial mistakes because its default setting is to American English. xp