The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Tri-City Herald. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Spokesman-Review editorial board.

Its encouraging to hear that neither grammer or spelling will get in the way of are student’s dreams of college. The basic principals of writing is less important then they’re thought process.

Understand what we are saying? Surely you can make it out, even if reading the grammatical disaster above is the silent equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.

Prepare for more squirming. The people at the College Board, the company that administers the SATs, have revamped the test they will offer this spring. Students will have to write a 25-minute essay in which they will be asked to take a position on an issue.

According to a College Board spokeswoman, graders will treat the essays as first drafts. Punctuation, grammar and spelling mistakes will not prevent a student from receiving a top score, unless they get in the way of understanding the essay.

That is a strange message to send to college-bound students who are entering a world where what they have to say will be judged by how they say it.

Fortunately, the new writing section also will have multiple-choice questions asking students to identify grammar errors and improve sentences and paragraphs. Still, the goal should be to make students’ grasp of those writing rules innate enough that they don’t need a prompt to obey them.

The modern tools of grammar and spell check are great, but do we really want to get to the point where good writing is dependent on a computer program?

Know way!