Grammar and spell check double-check

Ann Wylie — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 12:19:18 +0000

Don’t forget to use your brain, too

Spel chekers, hoo neeeds em?

— Alan James Bean, American astronaut

‘Ewe well sea watt aye mien sum dais.’ Image by phototastic

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‘Ewe well sea watt aye mien sum dais.’ Image by phototastic

I’m sure you caught this news item last month. This version is from The Week:

Several Pennsylvania high school students had their last names changed in their yearbook by an automatic computer program. Alessandra Ippolito was listed as Alexandria Impolite, while Max Zupanovic was rechristened Max Supernova. Kathy Carbaugh’s photo appeared next to the name Kathy Airbag.

I love spell check. It can save even the most talented writers and editors from embarrassing situations. But, obviously, spell check can cause embarrassment, too.

“If your … software-based spell-checker has not already come back to haunt you because you trusted it too well, sooner or later, it will,” writes Chris Smith, the brilliant copywriting guru at Entergy Corp. And it will not be in a sentence as obvious as this:

“My Outlook spell-checker just ran that last sentence and thought it was just fine and asked if I wanted it to check the rest of the message. I decided to trust my brain instead.”

Recheck spell check

The solution, of course, is to trust your brain, or to recheck spell check. Here’s how:

Run spell check on your copy. Let the software do its job. But consider your spell checker your editing assistant, not the vice president of proofreading for your copy.
Search for frequently misused words. Check “to” and “too,” “lose” and “loose.” If your CEO’s name is Jon Ratliff, search for “John” and “Ratcliff.”
Use your brain. Or someone else’s. “Do final proofing yourself,” Smith counsels, “or ask one of your corporate communications friends to apply a fresh eye.”

Here’s hope

After agonizing over the sad state of proofreading at Pennsylvania high school yearbook publishers, I was happy to read this story in The Week:

Buddies Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson decided to drive across country together and soon ended up on an unusual crusade: correcting the bad spelling and grammar they kept encountering on signs along the way. Among other editing triumphs, they have persuaded a miniature-golf-course owner in Galveston, Texas, to change the lettering on a structure from “Davy Jones Locker” to “Davy Jones’s Locker.” A posting in Albuquerque that once read “No Smoking Are Dogs Allowed,” now has an “Or” where the “Are” was.

That’s good news. And not a spell checker in sight.

_____

Sources: “Bad week for …,” The Week, June 13, 2008

Chris Smith, “Spel tcheckers,” Three Things, Entergy Corp., May 25, 2006

“It wasn’t all bad,” The Week, April 11, 2008

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