Food, cooking, eating, and me

OK, the word is spelled ‘gluten’. It’s not that hard, and it makes a difference.

• gluten: a tenacious elastic protein substance especially of wheat flour that gives cohesiveness to dough – Merriam Webster on ‘gluten’
• glutton: 1 a : one given habitually to greedy and voracious eating and drinking b : one that has a great capacity for accepting or enduring something {glutton for punishment} – Merriam Webster on ‘glutton’
• glutten: not a word
• gluton: not a word, but perhaps they will someday give this name to a newly-discovered subatomic particle

As long as I’m on proper spelling, the word celiac is derived from a Greek word meaning abdominal cavity. The disease is spelled celiac with a small ‘c’, celiacs is the plural of celiac, referring to a group of gluten-intolerant folk, and celiac’s is something that belongs to a person with celiac.

It really is possible for just about everybody to either learn how to spell properly in the first place or look up the words that they are unsure about. Garbled writing that is full of typos is hard to read and fails to communicate its message. Typos are just carelessness. Proofread once and fix those typos. We are not writing for our own consumption on the web, but for many people, each of whom must take extra time to decipher an unclear post, and some of whom may be unable to figure out the intent, owing to the fact that their native language may not even be English. One person’s saving 30 seconds on proofreading may result in hours of extra work over many readers.

Thank you.