Full of Rubbage

HAL

There was a time when a Dictionary and Thesaurus were never far from my fingertips, but years ago I foolishly switched up to relying on my computer.  Soon after, I began compiling a list of words Hal didn’t recognize: Svengali, bonified, Rockette, Macchu Picu. Hal does know Jurassic Park. When I typed ‘gamefully’ the computer suggested nothing more than game fully.  I can’t imagine using that…wait…”She arrived at the game fully sated from that afternoon’s encounter with Les.”

I’m sure I’m not the only one annoyed at the words Word cannot identify, like rubbage: certainly underused but valid nonetheless. That red squiggly underline distracts me from my prose as my failing memory frantically tries to prove I can still spell.  Here are Hal’ssuggestions:  rib cage; cubage; cribbage; rub age (???); and finally rebate.

I am against verbal shortcuts, and don’t particularly like Hal trying to outguess what I want to say. I lose my concentration. Why is it so difficult to use complete words and sentences? And if we’re abbreviating more and more, why not just use Shorthand?  There’s a world of former secretaries who would still be able to keep up.

And why is cursive writing being phased out? Who will be left to interpret the Constitution, or even old letters?  To anyone interested in discovering their Ancestry, my rhetorical question is whether they are also interested in understanding their ancestors? Submitting DNA or sifting through other’s work online won’t really help on that account.

What can is something which is also out of style: letter writing. People can't even be bothered with emails anymore. Too bad; I’ve got piles of letters from (now deceased) Mom which I can re-read at my leisure.  In those 6-legal pages front and back manuscripts she not only described her “Lazy Dayz,” but included anecdotes from her childhood and life’s experiences. Mom wrote them in script.

I wanted a synonym for curtailing.  I knew Hal would first send me to the base word curtail, so to save time I re-typed curtail before being prompted.  Hal demanded I correct my tense (back) to the grammatically correct curtailing; I did so and asked again; but no, Hal demanded curtail so I changed it again.  But because it was Hal’s idea, I finally got the synonyms.

Think I’ll pick up a Thesaurus at my next Goodwill.