Originally published in The Clifton Courier, July 12, 2017

I’m trying to become a better speller, and it’s not going well.

I know Year 7 Dannielle would be very disappointed in me. It’s been enough time between drinks (of cordial, obviously) so I don’t feel like it’s too braggy for me to say that she was generally around the top of her class when it came to spelling test Fridays. Granted, there were so few of us that you could technically be in the top 10 and the bottom 10 at the same time, but that doesn’t count.

The point is that Year 7 Dannielle liked to consider herself a bit of a wordsmith. When you take inflation (of my 12-year-old ego, that is) into account, this means that I was generally competent in the written word. Fractions weren’t my jam, but I did the words good.

Now, as a legitimate grown up I use phrases like “did the words good”. Yes, I used that particular phrase that for humorous purposes, but my misuse of the English language isn’t always intentionally ironic.

Thanks to the inclusion of a spellchecker in basically every computer program I use and autocorrect on my mobile, my spelling skills have declined a little. Because most of the writing I do is on a computer or on a smartphone, I have become used to these brilliant technological advancements, and it’s making me lazy.

The times I do write the traditional way – with pen and paper – are for very minor applications. Most of the time my handwriting is exercised in a letter to my sister, who doesn’t judge me for my mistakes. Other times it’s for shopping lists, when I’m the only one who sees it and, because I know perfectly well what “yog” and “strawbs” means, I rarely write out the full words anyway.

So most of the writing I do is done with the help of grammar applications.  And it’s making me lazy. I no longer have to know how many Cs are in “necessary” or whether the I comes before the E in “believe”. As long as I know the general gist of the word, most of the time the computer will work out what I’m trying to say and correct it for me.

This idea is great in theory, and super handy when you’re in a high-stress scenario such as smashing out a last-minute 2000-word essay. But over time this isn’t such a neato thing. After being out of practise of having to spell for myself for so long, I can feel myself regressing.

Sometimes I catch myself trying to spell “once” with a W. I try to put an I in “month”. The other day I caught myself trying to spell “wrong” with a U. And yes, I’m well aware of the irony in spelling the word “wrong” incorrectly.

So I’m trying to right my wrongs.

In an increasingly digital age, I’m doing my best to get back to the basics by literally crossing my Ts and dotting my Is.

But I work in the online sphere; I can’t not use computers. I don’t have a fax machine to send in this column every week, and I would need Mum to drastically increase the fruitcake drop-offs if someone at this fine newspaper had to both decipher and type out my hand-written drivel. I can’t change my reliance on computers.

But I can change the settings on my phone. So last week, I did just that. I turned autocorrect off, meaning I’m now flying solo when it comes to spelling. The red line comes up when I make an error, but it’s up to me to fix it. Already it’s making a difference. I urge you to give it a crack.

But be careful with what you write, especially on social media. The other day I was posting about the smell of the trains on Twitter, comparing them a lucky dip after pointing my observations that they sometimes smell like jelly crystals and sometimes smell like vomit. Unfortunately, I’d made a spelling error and didn’t proofread before I hit “tweet”.

About an hour later I had a notification on my phone from the train company asking me what a “licky dip” was.

I still maintain that this was spell check’s fault.