On eBay, spelling matters

We've come a long way from the plain black text on gray background days, but the Web remains a text-oriented medium. Need more proof? People who can't spell or write well make less money selling on eBay, according to the New York Times.

Not only are their auctions missed by buyers searching for correctly spelled words, but they fall prey to entrepreneurs who buy misspelled items at low prices, then turn a profit by reselling the items with the proper spelling. (I never cease to be amazed at the new businesses that spring out of online commerce.)

Some experts say there is no evidence that people are spelling worse than they ever did. But with the growth of e-mail correspondence and instant messaging, language has grown more informal. And much as calculators did for arithmetic, spell checkers have made good spelling seem to quite a number of people like an obsolete virtue.

Not that spell checkers are used by nearly everyone. Indeed, experts say the Internet — with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles — is a treasure trove of bad spelling.

Random thought: So, if someone were to write a spider that crawled Web sites looking for misspelled words, then e-mailed its reports to the Webmaster, do you think that would be seen as helpful or a pest?