Cant anyone hear spel

Today's online edition of The Chicago Tribune, in reporting a story of a legal dispute between actors Kevin Costner and Stephen Baldwin, misspelled the name "Costner" as "Coster" in the headline and in a picture caption and also used "degended" for "defended". A later edition still had the picture caption spelled incorrectly.

Unfortunately, poor proofreading is not unusual.How often do you see egregious misspellings of names and places in the graphics on TV news programs? These shows are of course primarily aimed at seniors (who should know better)as evidenced by the plethora of pharmaceutical commercials for scary new medicines with frightening side effects ranging from bed wetting to erections lasting four hours to thoughts of suicide ("just ask your doctor").

Obviously a major cause of our national inability to spell correctly is the Internet. While proper grammar and spelling has more or less been shunted aside in the E-Mail world, the rising use of texting has been ruinous especially to young people.[Even TNB has been affected--in his occasional text to a family member, he might use "how r u"].

Also, the justifiable emphasis on math and science today has relegated the study of English to a secondary position. Back in the day, when TNB and his peers were learning how to spell, the teachers were largely tough, unmarried Irish women--who if it were Catholic instead of public school would likely have been tough, unmarried Irish nuns.
No raps on the knuckles though.

All may not be lost--TNB is familiar with an 8 year old sports fan who routinely catches errors in the spelling of athletes names.