Why Spell Check is Not Enough

The invention and implementation of computer spell check has been both a blessing and a curse to writers and editors. You can find spell check in almost every program on your computer that supports word processing. It appears in Word, TextEdit, your email, your blog...even users with certain operating systems have an automatic spell check feature that will underline misspelled words without you having to select the "check spelling" option.

Now, as I write, my browser has underlined "TextEdit" in red, alerting me that this word is spelled incorrectly. What an age we live in!

However, spell check is not enough. Even I, when I first learned of this device, thought this would SO cut down on the time it took to revise papers I wrote before handing them in for grading. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way (as I'm sure MANY people have) that spell check does NOT catch all of your errors.

For example:

i walked down to there room. It wasn't like I had intended to go the re myself, but no body had wanted to go threw this torture with me. When I knocked on the door, I meant to announce myself to, but I was so nervous I forgot i was even standing there in the first place. It was quite inside the room. I assumed nobody was home. Thank goodness, on less confrontation i had to face that day.

There are numerous errors in that passage, but not a single thing is outlined in red by spell check. Here is the correct paragraph:

I walked down to their room. It wasn't like I had intended to go there myself, but nobody had wanted to go through this torture with me. When I knocked on the door, I meant to announce myself too, but I was so nervous I forgot I was even standing there in the first place. It was quiet inside the room. I assumed nobody was home. Thank goodness, one less confrontation I had to face that day.

Ten blatant errors that spell check missed. And often, writers overlook these errors because your brain knows what you are trying to say and reads your words correctly.

Advice? Do not rely only on spell check to make your writing error-free. Watch commonly confused words (through/threw/though, two/too/to, quiet/quite, etc.), capitalization, and accidental spacing between letters or words. Spell check will not find these errors. Also, it helps to get a second set of eyes on your paper. Someone else is more likely to catch your slip-ups since they haven't read the writing over and over like you have.

Or, if you're going to attempt to get published...get in touch with a good editor (of course).