So I was helping someone with a printer issue a while back. This person had typed out something work related, but it kept printing out sideways. Everyone was befuddled as to why it was doing that, which of course means that I get called in to work my magic. Evidently, my magic was on the fritz because it took much longer to fix than I would have ever anticipated. After what seemed like hours of troubleshooting, I realized that the right margin had been broken for one line which was causing it to automatically switch the style of printing. After that, it was easy to fix.
Now usually when I'm helping someone like that, I try not to read what they have written. They had asked me for help fixing a layout problem, and I try to limit my attention to that. It's incredibly hard not to notice every little detail though. My biggest problem in these situations is that typos have a way of just jumping out at me (I wish that was as true with my own writing as with someone else's). I noticed a simple typo and started to mention it as gently as possible, but I stopped. That typo had brought some friends. A lot of friends and even its grammatically challenged cousins. So many of them in fact that the problems were in the majority. I swallowed my unspoken suggestion, corrected the printing problem, and bowed out as gracefully as possible.
That situation left me thinking. In today's world, that person was handicapped. Don't get me wrong here, because I make mistakes like everyone else. Google has asked me on numerous occasions whether or not I had really meant "such and such" word instead of the mutilated thing that I had typed into the search bar. That's fine and dandy (and normal too). If your typing instead doesn't even get you into the right ballpark, then you are hurting.
Words and thoughts are the currency in the information age. Not being able to express yourself to a point where someone can figure out what you meant leaves you in the poor house these days.
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