4 ms·

I was very glad I still had my printed dictionaries that day they digged the cables over by accident. I'm not going to loose a large part of my functional liter

by tokai 8y ago

I was very glad I still had my printed dictionaries that day they digged the cables over by accident. I'm not going to loose a large part of my functional literacy, just because the power/internet goes out. Even if it only happened one time for the rest of my life, it would be worth the 20cm of shelf space it claimed.

JadeNB 8y ago
> I'm not going to loose a large part of my functional literacy, just because the power/internet goes out. Is your functional literacy really so dictionary-bound that a temporary outage makes you lose a large part of it? (Maybe it is! But I think that, for most people, referring to a dictionary, online or in print, is an occasional act.)
- tokai 8y ago
  I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I wouldn't called that bound. I would just call it putting in your best effort. I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should. I do sometimes check spelling when my word processor hasn't figured it out for me. But I can't say that I'm normally particularly uncertain about the meaning of the vast majority of words I use. Ever so often I check a word to verify that it really does have the precise meaning I think it does. But I can't say doing so is at all common. I'm exposed to a lot of bad writing but the problems are more around structure and logic. Incorrect vocabulary usually isn't a big problem in my experience.
  - JadeNB 8y ago
    > I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I agree! (Further it is impossible to know a good dictionary by heart, since it should be updated regularly.) I didn't mean to suggest that normal people don't need dictionaries, only that it seems a bit extreme to suggest that a large part of functional literacy (not just fluency or eloquence) would be lost by a temporary loss of access to one. > I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should. Just this one time, I hope that it is OK for me to nit-pick and point out that you almost certainly mean 'consult', not 'confer'.
bodas 8y ago
Computers these days have multiple megabytes of storage capacity and can easily fit a dictionary into their hard disk drives. So you don't need to worry about loss of network connectivity.

by tokai 8y ago

JadeNB 8y ago

> I'm not going to loose a large part of my functional literacy, just because the power/internet goes out. Is your functional literacy really so dictionary-bound that a temporary outage makes you lose a large part of it? (Maybe it is! But I think that, for most people, referring to a dictionary, online or in print, is an occasional act.)

tokai 8y ago
I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I wouldn't called that bound. I would just call it putting in your best effort. I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should.
- ghaff 8y ago
  >I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should. I do sometimes check spelling when my word processor hasn't figured it out for me. But I can't say that I'm normally particularly uncertain about the meaning of the vast majority of words I use. Ever so often I check a word to verify that it really does have the precise meaning I think it does. But I can't say doing so is at all common. I'm exposed to a lot of bad writing but the problems are more around structure and logic. Incorrect vocabulary usually isn't a big problem in my experience.
- JadeNB 8y ago
  > I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I agree! (Further it is impossible to know a good dictionary by heart, since it should be updated regularly.) I didn't mean to suggest that normal people don't need dictionaries, only that it seems a bit extreme to suggest that a large part of functional literacy (not just fluency or eloquence) would be lost by a temporary loss of access to one. > I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should. Just this one time, I hope that it is OK for me to nit-pick and point out that you almost certainly mean 'consult', not 'confer'.

bodas 8y ago

Computers these days have multiple megabytes of storage capacity and can easily fit a dictionary into their hard disk drives. So you don't need to worry about loss of network connectivity.