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.)
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.
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'.