Mystic Point
Active Member
While the city falls further into decay, some city councilors have found a new enemy and a new cause. Spell check.
Surely there are more important things for City Hall to concern itself with than precious Canadian Spelling. I wonder how much this will cost, so Howard Moscoe can spell bureau, " bureaux. "
What a bunch of apes.
Councillors (with two ls) peeved by U. S. spellings
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
A city hall committee decided yesterday the city needs software that defaults to Canadian spellings.
Councillor Howard Moscoe (Eglinton-Lawrence) said U. S. spelling is rampant in documents and on the website of Canada's largest city.
"On our official website, the word colour is wrong 11% of the time. Our employees spend thousands of hours of their time cumulatively correcting misspellings. I really don't want any more excuses."
He added that, "The government of Canada is one of the worst offenders. The word colour is spelled wrong 3,000 times, or 15.9% of the time."
Mr. Moscoe gave the committee a list of 78 Canadian spellings "kicked out by my spell-check," including "pyjama," "bureaux," "litre," "loonie" and "toonie," "paycheque," "vigour," "saltpetre" and "yodelled."
The Government Management Committee, in about as impassioned language as such a body can muster, voted unanimously to "recommend that City Council request to the Chief Information Officer, IT, to make the necessary alterations to the City's IT system to accommodate dictionary definitions specific to the 'Canadian' language."
The city's Chief Information Officer, Dave Wallace, told the committee that his staff have already "done quite a bit of work on this. We have new content management software, and the company we work with has been taken over by Opentext, based in Waterloo, so that should help us," he said.
Mr. Moscoe said he does not want the city to spend large sums changing its software. When IT does replace software, he wants to make sure city computers default to Canadian spelling each time the user logs on.
"This has been a bugaboo of mine," said Councillor Gloria Lindsay-Luby (Etobicoke Centre) who chairs the committee. "There are few things that really bug me and this is one of them. I'm always surprised that councillor is spelled with one "l". And Ukrainian is constantly misspelled, and I've had to get that corrected umpteen times.
' 'Apparently Microsoft spells it correctly, and then our staff removes the first "i." This is nothing to be laughed at."
Mr. Moscoe is eager for change. "I'm tired of seeing red squiggly lines under my words when I know they are spelled right," he said. "It's making me see red."
pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com
Surely there are more important things for City Hall to concern itself with than precious Canadian Spelling. I wonder how much this will cost, so Howard Moscoe can spell bureau, " bureaux. "
What a bunch of apes.
Councillors (with two ls) peeved by U. S. spellings
Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National Post
A city hall committee decided yesterday the city needs software that defaults to Canadian spellings.
Councillor Howard Moscoe (Eglinton-Lawrence) said U. S. spelling is rampant in documents and on the website of Canada's largest city.
"On our official website, the word colour is wrong 11% of the time. Our employees spend thousands of hours of their time cumulatively correcting misspellings. I really don't want any more excuses."
He added that, "The government of Canada is one of the worst offenders. The word colour is spelled wrong 3,000 times, or 15.9% of the time."
Mr. Moscoe gave the committee a list of 78 Canadian spellings "kicked out by my spell-check," including "pyjama," "bureaux," "litre," "loonie" and "toonie," "paycheque," "vigour," "saltpetre" and "yodelled."
The Government Management Committee, in about as impassioned language as such a body can muster, voted unanimously to "recommend that City Council request to the Chief Information Officer, IT, to make the necessary alterations to the City's IT system to accommodate dictionary definitions specific to the 'Canadian' language."
The city's Chief Information Officer, Dave Wallace, told the committee that his staff have already "done quite a bit of work on this. We have new content management software, and the company we work with has been taken over by Opentext, based in Waterloo, so that should help us," he said.
Mr. Moscoe said he does not want the city to spend large sums changing its software. When IT does replace software, he wants to make sure city computers default to Canadian spelling each time the user logs on.
"This has been a bugaboo of mine," said Councillor Gloria Lindsay-Luby (Etobicoke Centre) who chairs the committee. "There are few things that really bug me and this is one of them. I'm always surprised that councillor is spelled with one "l". And Ukrainian is constantly misspelled, and I've had to get that corrected umpteen times.
' 'Apparently Microsoft spells it correctly, and then our staff removes the first "i." This is nothing to be laughed at."
Mr. Moscoe is eager for change. "I'm tired of seeing red squiggly lines under my words when I know they are spelled right," he said. "It's making me see red."
pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com
