Spelling Chequer

In my family, holidays are always times for the teachers (and students!) in the family to commiserate and share funny stories about school. This poem was one of the things that came up today:

CANDIDATE FOR A PULLET SURPRISE 

Eye have a spelling checker. 
It came with my Pea Sea. 
It plane lee marks four my revue 
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it, 
Your sure reel glad two no. 
Its vary polished inn it's weigh. 
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
 It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
 It helps me right awl stiles two reed, 
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
 Eye trussed too bee a joule. 
The checker pours o'er every word
 To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checkers 
Hour spelling mite decline, 
And if we're lacks oar have a laps, 
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
 Is checked with such grate flare, 
Their are know faults with in my cite, 
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
 It does knot bring a tier. 
My pay purrs awl due glad den
 With wrapped words fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
 Of witch won should bee proud, 
And wee mussed dew the best wee can, 
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
 Such soft wear four pea seas, 
And why eye brake in two averse 
Buy righting want too pleas.

The original version was written by Jerrold H. Zar, a former professor of Ecology at Northern Illinois University, in 1992.

These days when I'm writing in a program that doesn't have a built in spell check, I'm constantly second guessing whether or not I've spelled something correctly. So maybe spell check misses some pretty obvious mistakes, but I think it saves me time in the end, and I'm mostly quite glad for it. What really bothers me about the current word processing programs is the "replace" function which automatically substitutes a new word when it thinks you've spelled something incorrectly. For example, in OpenOffice Writer if you're trying to write about IHS Global Insight, every time you type "IHS," OpenOffice changes it to "his." This is extremely frustrating.