Tiffany Markman

This is a true story:

I have a client in the diary business. They design and manufacture custom diaries for their clients. All sorts. Diaries with hard covers, soft covers, gold leaf. Diaries with inspiration and imagery. And they proof their diaries very carefully before printing. But once, we very nearly let 1 500 diaries go to print, expensively, featuring the heading – in large letters – ‘PUBIC HOLIDAYS’.

Yikes.

Not because we don’t know the difference between ‘pubic’ and ‘public’, mind you, but because Spell Check doesn’t. We were complacent about having spell-checked and our eyes showed us, all of us, what we wanted to see.

End of the true story.

This article is about spelling. In it, I’ll give you 3 quick tips for improving yours. Because you can’t rely on Spell Check and you can’t afford to make mistakes.

Why not?

Well, poor spelling creates a bad impression, implying either carelessness or cluelessness – both of which can be damaging to your reputation. And private anxiety about shoddy spelling can inhibit your workplace writing, especially your choice of words. So, read on…

Tip 1:

A trick that expert proof-readers use is to read short copy backwards. Not for meaning, but to spot the mistakes your brain glosses over when you read it the right way. I call this phenomenon ‘Neuro Auto-Correct’ – the way your brain shows you what you want to see, not what’s actually there.

‘Definitely’ instead of ‘defiantly’. ‘Rain’, not ‘reign’. ‘Casual’, not ‘causal’.

And this happens either because you can’t spell too well, or because you mis-typed and Spell Check can’t identify context. So please don’t assume that because there are no red lines beneath your copy, it’s good to go.

Do a spell check, yes, but then use your brain… This is easier than it sounds.

Start on the bottom right hand corner of your text – in other words, at the end of the last sentence – and scan the sentence backwards til you get to the beginning. Remember, you’re not reading it for meaning; you’re glossing over it so that mistakes can jump out at you. This technique really works.

Note: Even if you’re a poor speller, you’ll see how misspelled words just don’t ‘look right’ in a lot of cases. And if it looks dodgy, it’s probably dodgy.

Tip 2:

We all have our spelling demons. Mine, for a long time, was ‘valuable’. I’d leave out the second ‘a’. And I can never, ever remember how to spell ‘embarrassed’. That flipping word has too many r’s and s’s.

So I’ve put together a short list of words that I consistently find difficult to spell (necessary, occasion, glamorous), and the list lives on my desktop for easy reference. It used to live on a Post-It, stuck to my laptop, but it got too large…

Note: When you have a query about English, about spelling or grammar, and all you want is a simple answer to your question, not a complete lesson in grammar, try this: www.whichenglish.com.

Tip 3:

Watch out for Americanisation. This is a sure sign of the amateur business writer in South Africa/the UK (as well as, thankfully, a major source of good, honest, hourly work for thousands of pro proof-readers).

Use ‘favourite’, not ‘favorite’. ‘Analyse’, not ‘analyze’. ‘Centre’, not ‘center’. ‘Judgement’, not ‘judgment’. ‘Licence’, not ‘license’. ‘Programme’, not ‘program’. ‘Jewellery’, not ‘jewelry’. And so on.

And don’t rely on the SA/UK Spelling selection in Microsoft Word to do this for you. It doesn’t.

My method, once I’ve proofed a document, is to do a Find/Replace for ‘ze’, for ‘or’, for ‘er’, etc. But I go through the results and change them manually, because I don’t want to change ‘citizen’, which is spelled correctly, to ‘citisen’.

Note: I’m not a wild fan of Wikipedia. But its overview of UK vs US spelling is useful. Bookmark it in your browser and refer to it when you’re not sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences.

And, in closing…

Be super-careful that, when you mean to type, “We might need some new cheques,” you don’t type, “Wee mite knead sum knew checks.” Because Spell Check has absolutely no idea which of these is the right one… Good luck.