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Comment by nbroyal | Hacker News Reader

This type of comment has always bothered me. I'll admit it, I don't really understand what the guy has against spell check. However, is it really THAT big of a deal that this guy's work may contain some misspellings? Furthermore, neither his lack of a willingness to use spell check nor the mistakes contained within the message (as long as it is still coherent) says anything about the quality of the actual content. It just seems dismissive for the most trivial of reasons.

EDIT: With all that said, I'm not vouching for the quality of the post one way or another. I'm just saying, judge the content by the content and nothing else.

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What's more off-putting is the up-front refusal to use a spellcheck. It means that he's aware he has a problem and refuses to fix it.

If there were more of an explanation, it might endear me to the guy. If he dug into some of the haphazard history of English spelling conventions and refused to adhere to illogical paradigms, I'd give him credit. If he mentioned something from communications theory, I'd give him a pass. But the explicit statement that "my idiosyncrasies are higher priority than your user experience" is not a good statement to make. It's a significantly worse impression than a simple typo, and a stronger one because it's intentional instead of an oversight.

Totally with you, though I might not find intentional misspellings as endearing as you. I'll add to your list that I can cut a lot of slack to non-native speakers.

But his situation is even worse than you say: He's aware that he has a problem, and he's also aware of the existence of a virtually effortless, automatic solution to this problem. Even if it only makes his writing 1% clearer, isn't it a free 1%?

If his site were ugly, and he apologized for not being a better designer, then ok, I can understand that. There's a slight barrier to having an aesthetically appealing site. But it's 2009 - what is he composing in that doesn't have automatic spellcheck? The contents of this very text box are being checked for spelling.

(I'll avoid commenting on the phrase "deal with it"; maybe it was funnier in his head.)

"is it really THAT big of a deal that this guy's work may contain some misspellings?"

IMHO it is, especially considering how trivially easy it is to correct these misspellings. What is more bothersome is not the presence of misspellings, but his acknowledgment that he has a problem, but steadfast (and even arrogant) refusal to fix it.

To me this suggests a "good enough" work ethic, which honestly doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

That being said, I'd probably only apply this sort of judgment if I was thinking of hiring him or buying from him - it does imply a lack of attention to detail, a rejection of things that others consider basic competency, and an arrogant attitude.

I agree that it isn't that typos and misspellings aren't that big of a deal, but I think they correlate significantly with clarity of thought. Making judgments based on superficial characteristics isn't necessarily a bad thing; the key is to make sure that one is choosing the right surfaces to look at.

For me, the disclaimer is a red flag, but the quality of the text countered it quite well. Should I presume his logic is positively correlated with his strength of sentence structure? Usually I do.

But for me, this was overridden by the attempt to cite fiction as an authority. Good fiction is good because it appeals to our sense of authenticity, not because it actually is authentic. Thus using fiction as an example is usually just arguing that something 'sounds right'.

I just watched a very good documentary on steriod use (Bigger Stronger Faster) that pointed out that the real Stallone's physique as depicted in the movie relied fairly heavily on steroids. Sure, there were lots of crunches, but heavy drugs as well. Is the real message of this article that deception (self or otherwise) is essential to entrepreneurial success?

There is a bit of ad hominem attack in my comment, I won't deny that, because it's intentional. He's not reporting facts or offering analysis, he's offering advice and opinion, in which case the person offering it is an important part of evaluating the quality of the content.

I'm in agreement. Jordan Cooper's posts are thoughtful and coherent.

Fred Wilson pen's many of his posts on his blackberry and in many ways that adds to the conversational tone he tries to set on his blog.

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