Call it nickpicking, but why in the world can't Gary North (www.garynorth.com) produce web pages that are at least reasonably free of spelling errors? Its getting worse, not better, it seems to me. I realize that the guy puts in umpteen hours, slaving away to provide free info, but it seems to me that if he (or someone) would just read over what he writes, it would catch 90% of the obvious typos. Anyone know of maybe some freebee spell checking software that we could get him to use?

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), December 21, 1998

Answers

UUUMMMMMMM... It is hard to type and masterbate at the same time?

-- Dieter (questions@toask.com), December 21, 1998.

You know, the ironic thing about that stupid little remark is that you yourself spelled masturbate wrong, dumbass.

-- Jose Segura (josesegura@hotmail.com), December 21, 1998.

Ok, Jack, I call it nitpicking

-- Elbow Grease (Elbow_Grease@AutoShop.com), December 21, 1998.

JOSE

It's like I said!!! Don't you listen?????

IT IS HARD TO TYPE AND...

-- Dieter (questions@toask.com), December 21, 1998.

This topic is really a waste of time. Can't we stick to what's important?

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), December 21, 1998.

Oh, Excuuuuuuuuuuuse ME.

Who died and made you king, boner?

-- Dieter (questions@toask.com), December 21, 1998.

Jack,

from what I've seen, it appears that GN may be using some sort of text conversion software...dunno, but a lot of the spelling errors - 'year' for 'hear' is one from today - are similar to those I've seen both from voice to text software and from some OCR software. Also odds are that one generally will NOT spot one's own spelling errors - people tend to read what they know is supposed to be there, rather than what actually is.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), December 21, 1998.

Arlin: North scans the commentaries from Koskinen, who faxes them to him daily. Koskinen gets them telepathically from the Time Dwarfs of Zeti Reteculi. I think they get them from Drudge or somebody.

If this isn't proof of the vast right wing conspiracy I don't know what is...

-- a (a@a.a), December 21, 1998.

Maybe Gary is dyslexic...did I spell that right?

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), December 21, 1998.

Does anyone else differentiate between typographical errors and misspellings? Masterbate is a misspelling; mastirbate is, most likely, a typo. When one is pressed for time (and who isn't?) setting up in a word-processing program is tedious. In this medium, message is more important than execution. To err is human. Witness Y2K.

Hallyx

"Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible." ---Samuel Goldwyn

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), December 21, 1998.

a.

aren't the Elbownians involved in all of that somehow, as well?

Arlin [who is merely an insomniac, this evening...er, morning...]

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), December 22, 1998.

On Gary North's site a few months ago, I remember seeing him ask if a price of such-and-such was too high to pay for someone who did a lot of his website maintenance.

Soon after that, I started seeing spelling errors at Gary's site. I don't know any other facts about this, but always assumed that some new person who was not Gary North's first choice for the job ended up being the one who does the work to keep www.garynorth.com updated.

Again, I don't if this is the way things are, but that was my own take on the situation.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), December 22, 1998.

anyone who can't handle spelling mistakes should email GN and offer to spellcheck for him. otherwise, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

-- Jocelyne Slough (jonslough@tln.net), December 22, 1998.

Cody, I guess one motivation here is that I personally think quite highly of North's site, and am always recommending it to others as a place to go for good Y2K info (along with the more mainstream ones like www.year2000.com). First impressions are lasting ones, and I can't help but think that someone who has just become Y2K aware is going to get a bad "first time" impression, due to what seems to at this point be rampant typos running around -- way more than ever before. I don't want to in any way make this appear more important than it should be, but I don't want to lessen it either.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), December 22, 1998.

Yes Halyz, typos and mispellings are easy to distinguish. Typos are usually a lettet nezt to one abother, or inversde letters (which I do otften), wile mispellings are of the phonetic sort, such as "masterbate" (Master Bate?) and "mispelling", and also from using words that sound the same but mean different things, witch I do often too.

-- Crhis (catsy@pond.com), December 22, 1998.

ROFLMAOHHOETKFIAPIP

Thanks, Crhis, for a great start to beautiful day.

Hallyx

Miss Piggy's Fourth Law: "Never try to eat more than you can lift."

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), December 22, 1998.

Used to work for a mine super named Richard Bates. The possibilities with humour and that name are endless. The scale man and I had a ton of fun with it.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), December 22, 1998.

Which is also rumored to be one reason why the very disturbed young man in _Psycho_ is named "Norman Bates". Brits have been known to refer as "young Master [Lastname]...", which I'm sure was the source of much hilarity on the set.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), December 22, 1998.

I have no idea how GN manages to find time to scour the web and add all his commentaries, given that he's also making extensive survivalist preparations. He's probably banging all out too fast to pay attention. And if you ask him about it, he'll probably tell you that correct spelling don't put food in your mouth.

And it's "nitpicking," not "nickpicking." :-) Still, anything that would boost his credibility might help the rest of us convince our neighbors.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), December 22, 1998.

If u r knot smart enuf 2 git the jisst uf the message, then ur shore will knot git the jist uf Y2k. Sew wee shuld luk beyond hour noises and understand what wee R hear 2 learn. JMHO.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), December 22, 1998.