Spell checker

I WAS floored by the letter from Grant Nemirow (Letters, June 15) complaining of the vocabulary used in a profile by Rachel Abramowitz.

Was this a riff on George Carlin’s seven dirty words (in this case eight) or does Mr. Nemirow truly feel that the way to reach a “younger” demographic is to further dumb down vocabulary?

Of course the generation under 40 can’t deal with vocabulary of more than five or six letters since the educational system in California, and the rest of the nation for the most part, didn’t want to ruin the self-esteem of its students by cluttering up their written work with “red” marks regardless of the spelling.

Add to this the use of computer programs with spell checks, even though they can’t tell if usage of a particular word is correct or not.

Throw in the use of text messaging, where the fewer letters used to convey words is paramount to saving time and money, and we are ending up with a generation of illiterate morons incapable of, dare I say, using a dictionary to find out what a word actually means.

Please do not abet this dumbing down of the populace.

Steve Barad

Covina