Stefano Baroni wrote:
I do not like on the fly spellcheck either (among other nuisances, it
forces me to change the default language everytime I switch from one
language to another). However: 1) when writing short letters it may be
useful; 2) I do not think it is a good idea to tell people what they
should like and what they shouldn't. Just an opinion ...
What they like is up to them. But I teach writing, so I think I get to
tell people what helps with writing and what does not.
rh
SB
On Aug 13, 2007, at 6:44 PM, Richard Heck wrote:
Sam Lewis wrote:
Of course. And anyone who wants to code this can do so. This was in
response to the suggestion that LyX lacked this incredibly
wonderful and painfully obvious feature. My point was that it isn't
obviously wonderful. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that, if you
think you want it, you're either wrong or not very focused on
writing. But to each his or her own.
Thanks Richard for the discursive effort! I'm seriously
reconsidering my
understanding of WYSIWYG and its typesetting counterpart. I used to
think that
focusing on writing means also paying attention to the order of
letters, rather
than assuming that this something to do with "style".
No offense intended. But the point is an important one, anyway. I
actually do think that paying too much attention to the order of the
letters impedes writing. If I'm trying to write a paragraph and know
I'm going to change it half a dozen times (at least), why do I care
whether each word has been spelled correctly? That's clean-up, to be
done once I've got the damn thing moderately stable. (That's why I
still write so much with pen and paper, because it's the only way I
know to really get rid of ALL the distractions.) Writing is hard, and
I am firmly convinced that the tools we have grown accustomed to do
not make our lives easier. Those bad habits are hard to unlearn,
especially if you're not even aware you've got them.
If I'm just writing a letter, then maybe that's different, but even
then I'm not sure, actually.
Either way, one thing for sure out of this discussion is that
perhaps the
boundaries between "style" and "mere writing" are not as clear cut.
Also, of
course, if your texts consists of many formula or a mass of strings
of letters
which are not in your dictionary, a on the fly spellcheck becomes
utterly
pointless (yes distracting!) and should be switched off. However,
this is
exactly what I was trying to say with my (in hindsight probably not
very clever)
example of "humanities" writing. For some people, there might not be
much
distraction (in form of occasional wavily lines), but rather a
continually
indication of your document writing status, which I consider is a
basic feature.
Maybe this is true of some documents, and maybe it'd be nice at some
very late stage of the game, when you're just doing clean-up. But I
just offer the suggestion that a continual indication of the status
of a document that is very much in flux is worse than useless.
Richard
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Richard G Heck, Jr
Professor of Philosophy
Brown University
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Stefano Baroni - SISSA & DEMOCRITOS National Simulation Center -
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Richard G Heck, Jr
Professor of Philosophy
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http://frege.brown.edu/heck/
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