Spelling counts

Today's lesson: It's hard to use the Internet if you cannot spell.

Mark's got a research project due next Tuesday. He wrote a report about sharks, and now needs a presentation board, with at least six pictures and captions, to go along with it.

He's taking a computer class at school, and though it has no Internet access, he fancies himself a computer whiz. So he started his online research with Google images, which has a lot of shark pictures, but not many captions. He then expanded his search outside of Google.

I left him at the computer while I did laundry. He was typing away and seemed okay, but when I came back 10 minutes later, he was gone.

I found him playing Legos in his room.

"What happened with your shark pictures?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I couldn't find any, so I gave up."

"What do you mean you couldn't find any?"

"None of the Web sites worked," he answered.

I thought maybe the Internet connection was wonky, so I checked it out myself. It worked just fine for me.

I decided on a little troubleshooting. I clicked the Address button to look at the history, to see where exactly he'd been searching.

And that's where I found the problem. He'd typed "www.animlplanut.com" at first, and when that went nowhere, he revised it to "www.animlplanit.com." They both lead to a page not found error message.

There were also a couple other addresses, including "www.discvry.com" and "www.discvryanimls.com." He finally gave up the homework part, and decided to watch some funny animal videos on YouTube by typing the phonetically correct but technically incorrect address "www.utube.com."

Which is a real Web site for the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation. They sell new and used tube mills, pipe mills and roll forming machinery.

I have no idea what any of that means, and I found it about as interesting as Mark did. Because after that address, there were no other attempts. I'm guessing that's when Mark's interest in the Internet faded, replaced by his interest in the Legos instead.

And I thought my obsession with proper spelling was just a personality quirk. Turns out good spelling is not only helpful, it's actually essential--unless, of course, you really do want to order new or used tube mills instead of watching crazy cat videos.