Proper spelling - is it that important?

I don't mind a few spelling errors here and there, but it's ridiculous how little people seem to care about it. So many of them are caused by nothing more than laziness, but they always respond with some line about it being close enough or that they've just never been good with spelling so they don't bother trying. It's not difficult to grab a dictionary or simply choose a word you do know how to spell, and with resources like spellcheckers and dictionary.com there's very little excuse these days.

Online classes are the worst, since apparently people still see it as just the internet rather than school. In the three classes that I took there were so many chat abbreviations and shorthand being used in formal papers that some were barely legible. While I can't blame teachers for feeling like giving up out of frustration, they need to do their jobs and drive home the importance of not spelling like an idiot.

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