However, it's not so much about the spelling as it is about the basic concept. Anyone who's ever written and commented a program knows that the references to non-English terms that appear in comments will also fail a spell-check.

I'm persuaded that, if (a) people passing themselves off as "educated" should, having read many examples (and not just the Cliff Notes) of proper grammar, syntax, and orthography of the language, have learned how to spell most of the words they use, and are smart enough to review them before hitting either "save" or "send", whichever the case may be. Those who fail to do that leave the impression that they should probably leave, namely that they don't much care what they type.

This is particularly true of those who fat-finger their messages in so much of a hurry that they haven't time to go back and check 'em. I've taken to using FireFox, which has a built-in spell-checker, and, unfortunately, that doesn't always point out every error, such as the syntax error I made.

Someone who's so concerned about spelling things correctly that he wants a spell-checker to do the checking for him should first consider what he's planning to misspell. After all, programmers pride themselves on how cryptic their code is.

RE