Wednesday, June 02, 2010

'Warm Retards'













You really shouldn't be blasé with spellcheckers on email. Sure, they’ll pick up on misspelt words when the misspelling spells an incomprehensible word, but they don’t notice legitimate words creeping in where they really shouldn’t. Sadie got an email from a colleague who signed off with ‘warm retards’. 

Morag is seemingly unaware of the existence of spellchecking for emails. She writes her emails at speed and the end result could often pass as the work of Stanley Unwin. I could offer to help and make her look less hasty and less foolish, but I never seem to find the time.

Teachers are usually more careful - and quite formal - with their email correspondence. They only let themselves down with their undying attachment to the Comic Sans font. Recently I received an email from a primary school head teacher in Sunderland. Negotiations between her, a filmmaker and our nominated Creative Challenger had been lengthy and a project plan had been hammered out to everyone’s satisfaction over a period of several weeks. She was finding it hard to contain her excitement and made my day by writing that she was ‘moist excited’ at the prospect of working with me.