Chip,
Do you have a list of words that need to be watched carefully for awful typos that spell-check won’t catch?
I’ve seen “public meeting” turn out badly more than once because of a missing “l”, and I’ve seen “South Shore” have its reputation attacked when the second “S” turned into a “W.” Today, I caught a goof — pre-publication, fortunately — that would have turned a “faculty person” into a “faulty person.”
If copy editors and writers had a short list of words like these to read with extra caution, it might be extremely useful.
Doug Ross
Editorial Page Editor
The Times of Northwest Indiana
Doug,
I couldn’t agree more, and you can count on the “Chip on Your Shoulder” community to fill out the list of words that dodge spell-check.
As a faulty person, I learned the risks of spell-check in 1995 when I was editing that year’s edition of “Best Newspaper Writing.” The contest’s judges singled out a column about the Olympic victory of figure skater Oksana Baiul. If I’d trusted spell-check, the gold would have gone to Osaka Bail.
I’ve been keeping this correction in my hard drive since I first spotted it in the Jan. 6, 2007 edition of The New York Times:
Exhibit 3 comes courtesy of Canadian journalist Craig Silverman’s invaluable and often hysterically funny “Regret the Error” site, which “reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media.”
Silverman caught this correction that appeared August 27 in The Guardian. The British paper ‘fessed up in a transparent style rarely seen in U.S. newspapers.
What Does Misspelling Say about the Writer?
Funny as these orthographic mishaps may be, except to the perpetrator, there’s a larger lesson here: When humans (and, in this case, I’d like to include journalists in that category) cede oversight to computers, we not only discount the value of personal knowledge, but send a message to young people that you don’t have to develop that knowledge. Spelling? No worries; spell-check will do it for you. In a profession where words are the currency of the realm, that’s a dangerous message.
That was a painful lesson from my days in journalism school when I turned in a piece of sloppy copy. My teacher warned me that I was saying I was too important to deal with spelling, style, etc. Let the folks down the editing food chain deal with them. It’s insulting, he said, and arrogant. Turn in clean copy and the less time editors spend checking spelling, addresses and titles, the more time they will have to read, assess and edit in a substantive way.
“Bad spelling makes you look lazy,” says Mindy McAdams, a veteran copy editor and new-media consultant at the University of Florida. She uses a pungent analogy to drive her point home.
“It’s true that some geniuses can’t spell, but some geniuses walk around with gravy stains on their shirts. That’s what bad spelling seems like to me: a big, obvious gravy stain in the middle of your writing. If you wouldn’t wear stained, smelly clothing, you shouldn’t be content to have misspelled words all over your letters, articles, stories or Web pages.”
A Golden Rule and Tips to Avoid Embarrassment
If pressed to make a rule on the spell-checker, I’d say, by all means, use it, but never view it as the infallible last word. When in doubt, check the dictionary, either in book form or online. Read your copy aloud; chances are you’ll hear the mistake even if your eyes missed it.
Microsoft Word offers an auto-correct feature that can help keep your shirt clean. Every time spell-check flags a misspelled word, you can select the correct usage and hit the auto correct button. From then on, it automatically corrects your misspellings on the fly. Caution: Auto-correct doesn’t cover every misspelling, but if you consistently add correct ones, it comes close to flagging every typo your fingers produce.
There’s a low-tech approach, too. Make a list of words you commonly misspell (mine would include judgement, committment, mispell) and keep it close to your computer.
Of course, the question was about words that are spelled correctly but change your meaning.
Orthographically-challenged editors and writers need your help.
Add to the list of words that need to be watched carefully for awful typos that spell-check won’t catch. Offer solutions you’ve found useful in combating the spell-check scourge.
Thanks for asking, Doug
Chip
