08.02.08
Spelling lessens
Rather, misspelling lessens . . . lessens the impact of this newsletter coverage of a recent poll. Subject: impact of the digital age on the commercial viability of books.
Myself, I’d like to think that the digital age might serve to “significantly lesson” some postmyblog-nownownow digital age writers (if you grant me the verbification of lesson as a synonym for instruct). The issue is not whether the digital age will send legions of little electronic silverfish onto our bookshelves to gobble up all the paper books and cast the pages within from their tomes into their tombs. The issue is whether the digital age will send those silverfish into our writerly brains to kill the words themselves.
I’m being overly dramatic here, of course. Yet, I ask you to appreciate the irony of a web newsletter talking about the potential death of books via electronica while displaying the death of language precision via electronica. Is the “lessen lesson” attributable to relying on homonym-blind spell-checks? Or to what I consider to be the far greater danger: Instant publication sans editorial filters (that is to say, real editors, writers who actually look at their words twice other than to admire them, and real editors who edit the words of writers enamored with their own words).
Mistakes happen. I understand this personally, as I admit that I’ve fallen into the “lessen lesson” homonym trap myself—in drafts and not, to my knowledge, in published material.
The real danger to writing and to books is neither technology nor the digital age. It is haste. Slap-dash postmypearlsofwisdomnownownowhastehastehaste. Haste doesn’t necessarily make waste. Haste makes nonsense.
Are you lessoning to me?
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and 
. Feel free to 
JohnnyB said,
August 2, 2008 at 7:23 am
Haste is probably the major factor in spelling errors or homonym blindness. However, audio/video displacement of reading is the most ominous (why not “omenous”?). People listen to or watch news or listen to audio books or watch movies and don’t read books. Many people don’t see words in print and learn how to spell them or learn the difference between lesson and lessen. These young people today……….
Georganna Hancock said,
August 3, 2008 at 11:35 am
Yeeees!
As we post in haste, our spelling certainly deteriorates.
Your posts make my brain ache!