I’m not a bad speller but my fingers are.

See…

At work, I use a text expander. A text expander allows me to type just a few letters of a word and it “expands” the rest of the word for me. For example, for the phrase “a lot of”, I simply type ALO. For words like “definitely” and “absolutely” and “approximately” I only have to type the first few letters and Voila! the word appears. I have to be a super fast typer in my line of work and I don’t have time to stop and contemplate spelling rules like “i before e” and “double letters” and all the exceptions. I get paid for production, not for pauses.

However, I have noticed after working for entended periods of time that I start to misspell words in email and in social media conversations. I hate it! I can’t stand misspelled words or incorrect uses of words (there vs. their), mainly because I have to be so exact in my job. I’m trained to catch these types of errors but I also have several tools in my bag to help me so that I can work quickly.

Without my “tools” it seems I have to be even more vigilant to catch spelling and grammar errors, but it’s hard to slow down after I’ve been moving along so quickly at work.

Anyway, I guess this is a disclaimer that I want to be a good speller and I am a good speller but my fingers still want to type it the way they do at work. Muscle memory is a very interesting thing.