Level of comfort
We need time to think; we need (metaphorical) quiet to get into the flow. A tool that shouts “spelling error” with every typo is providing more distraction that help. Yet it feels good to make those red squiggles disappear — “We’re making progress!” — it feels good to play with fonts and shift the format. A computer is a far different beast that Heidegger’s hammer: it can be at hand in many ways simultaneously.
Having had to do some writing for MPOW lately, I’ve found that I’ve been getting good results by forcing myself to ignore the red squiggles and just plow on. It was a revelation of sorts – at first it’s really difficult to not correct immediately, but if you can get over that initial resistance, it gets easier to ignore the squiggles. Then when I come to a natural break in my thoughts, I can go back and right-click the errors into correctness. It’s very easy for me to fall into the trap of letting font-tweaking and margin-narrowing – the virtual equivalent of pencil sharpening and squaring the pad with the desk – keep me from getting to work.