We all have different skills. I’m happy to admit right at the start that although I can spell, I’m a useless cook, and I get very little pleasure from it. Others struggle with spelling. If that’s you, spellcheck might seem like the handy know-it-all friend who was always good for the right answers when you were at school.
But the English language plays tricks. We have a very high number of words that sound the same as other words, but are spelled differently. (They’re homophones, if you want to get technical.) And that’s where the problems can begin.
When wrong is right
Picture the following scenario.
The occasion is one of the Queen’s recent majestic milestones. A photographer has captured the lady herself gazing grimly through one of her famous transparent umbrellas, which is spattered with drizzle under a leaden sky.
As night follows day, the accompanying headline is inevitable. It reads: Long to rain over us.
You may groan.
Painful as they are, most of us take perverse pleasure in the fact that English allows us to create such puns. Those homophones really come into their own for jokes like that. As I write, we’re in the middle of a very British summer. It’s still raining, the Queen is still reigning, and somewhere, a journalist or other copywriter is still churning out tortured wordplay for the next tabloid newspaper or set of Christmas crackers.
But for every deliberate pun, there’ll be many more words that end up in the wrong place because they sound the same, or nearly the same, as other words.
And here’s the thing: spellcheck won’t highlight them, because they are real words.
Spellcheck is great for people who can spell
That might sound silly, but I’m convinced that’s its main benefit.
For those of us whose typing fingers move faster than our brains, those little red wiggly lines highlight our bloopers and save us valuable time. If we miss a word space, or forget to stop spelling banana, we get an instant virtual wrist slap and can correct accordingly.
If spelling is not your strength, then you are better off making really big errors – spellcheck does work nicely for booby-trap words like necessary and accommodate. Lots of people struggle with these, because, let’s face it, all those syllables really can be confusing. In cooking terms, they’re like soufflés – some people can do them but there’s no shame in not remembering the recipe.
The problem comes with the sneaky little words – often common ones – that you may not even realise you get wrong. (Please remember – I’m not getting at you. I can spell, but it took me years to learn how to cook pork chops, and I still avoid boiling eggs.)
Here are just a few that spellcheck may not notice, because each version is a real word:
it’s / its
loose / lose
brought / bought
too / to
we’re / were
your / you’re
their / there / they’re
effect / affect
There are loads more.
I’ve lost count of the number of properties for sale whose gardens have mature boarders. (I don’t want elderly lodgers in the shed. Will they be gone before I move in?)
Local newsletters boast about sports personalities with black belts in marital arts. (That’s getting a bit personal. Whatever happened to karate?)
And, more seriously, a leaflet for a catering service offered complimentary wines with your meal. It turned out that they meant wines carefully selected to go with each course. What the spelling mistake offered was free wine. Oops.
So no – I’m not criticising people who can’t spell. But I am saying that you can’t rely on spellcheck. It is not always your friend – and your friend is not always the best person to check your spellings.
If you choose me to proofread your writing, you get much more than just a spelling check. But I promise never to offer you one of my home-made soufflés. Deal?
Pernickety Kate likes nothing better than getting to grips with the nitty gritty of written language. If you’d like a fresh pair of eyes on your writing, please get in touch today!