Dumb post to the Stargardts Facebook group

Bill Cox waywardgeek at gmail.com
Wed Apr 10 07:32:47 EDT 2013


My central vision only started to decay a few years ago, so I've only
learned to listen to books over the last three years. I was always a
terrible speller, and a very slow reader, which I thought were related.
However, you guys seem to spell quite well, yet even a fast Braille reader
would have read more slowly than me.  I'm just curious how you guys learned
to spell so well when the slow readers like me never did.  In my case,
typing is what has finally enabled me to spell most words correctly.  I
cannot tell you how to spell a word if you ask me, but the muscle memory in
my hands know how to spell most common words.  Did touch memory help with
Braille?

Bill


On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:44 AM, Tony Baechler <tony at baechler.net> wrote:

> See my comments in-line below.
>
>
> On 4/9/2013 4:19 PM, Gregory Nowak wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 07:08:39AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>
>>> I always proofread everything before I post, so hopefully my posts
>>> are reasonably free of errors.  Most people don't.  It's amazing how
>>> many mistakes you can catch with 30 seconds of proofreading.
>>>
>>
>> I think a part of this for blind and sighted alike is laziness. I know
>> a few people who are just content to type what they have to say, and
>> just hit send, because they don't feel like reading through what they
>> wrote. These are people who are sighted and blind. I'm not assuming
>> here either. When I mentioned this to them, this is what they told me,
>> they don't feel like reading through casual writing. Unfortunately,
>> I've looked through their professional writing too, and they are
>> invariably surprised by the amount of errors I point out
>> to them in such
>> pieces of writing.
>>
>
> Yes, that was me at one time.  I guess I'm just different, but I was
> embarrased by the obvious spelling errors which I missed, so I made it a
> point to take the extra 30 seconds.  Besides, it's amazing what comes back
> to haunt you in Google search results.
>
>
>  On another note, I noticed a number of blind people, including
>> yourself putting two spaces in between every sentence. I put in just
>> one, because this is how I learned it in braille, and it just
>> stuck. Is there some sort of significance to the two spaces thing, or
>> is it just personal preference?
>>
>
>
> Ah, the two spaces.  Nowadays, it's mostly habbit.  I learned two things
> very early in life which I've never forgot.  One is that in Braille, we use
> one space between sentences and three spaces to indent a new paragraph.
> That's because Braille takes more space than print, but in the printed
> world, we use two spaces between sentences and five spaces to indent.  The
> other thing I learned was from my third grade teacher.  She said that you
> always, always separate sentences with two spaces no matter what.  That
> stuck and I've always done it that way.  I can't comment on why anyone else
> does and I've read from many different sources that one space is acceptable
> and preferred, but I can't help it.  If I purposely only use one space, it
> feels wrong to me.  The two spaces rule apparently disappeared in the
> 1950s, but it was still taught to me in school about 30 years later.
>
> As a final thought, here is another reason why I proofread.  Since I do
> use speech, I want to see how it sounds being read back to me.  Even though
> the spelling and grammar are generally good enough, sometimes there is
> awkward phrasing or I realize that I didn't complete my thought as clearly
> as I should.  By going back and reading again, I've often changed words and
> added sentences to help with clarification.  To paraphrase Isaac Asimov,
> the goal should be to write clearly and to be understood.
>
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