If you wish to rely completely on your device’s spellchecker without enlisting the services of a professional proofreader, it can be a false economy. The sections below will help to explain why you should use a competent proofreader as part of your documentation production process.
The reason is simply this: spellcheckers will only detect a particular word when it is incorrectly spelled – not if it is incorrectly used. Read on…
Misused words
Did you mean to say “ensure” or “insure”?
Is it to ensure a positive outcome or to insure a property?
Are you referring to “historic” or “historical” data?
Is the data historic because it’s famous or important in history, or historical because it happened in the past?
Was it to be “affect” or “effect”?
Were you trying to affect the outcome or effect a change? (Remember that “effect” can also be used as a noun.)
Problems with grammar
Most grammar errors aren’t identified by spellcheckers, with examples of these being improperly-used punctuation, incorrect tense usage, and misplaced modifiers*.
*A modifier is an adjective (colour, size, weight, etc.) to describe the noun that it accompanies, e.g. the gold watch. A misplaced modifier is a word (or phrase, or clause) that is separated from the word it describes (or modifies) and so makes a phrase appear awkward, confusing, or ridiculous. For example, “I found a man’s gold watch” is correct, but “I found a gold man’s watch” (i.e. with the modifier word gold misplaced) suggests that a gold man owns a watch.
Incorrect compound words
Consider: head quarters should be “headquarters”, book case should be “bookcase”, and watch maker should be “watchmaker”. You can find many other examples of commonly-misspelled compound words – for example, altogether (which has a different meaning than “all together”), superstructure, and sometime.
There are words which can make up a compound word in certain situations – for example, “I need to back up my hard drive because I need a backup of those files”.
Note that hyphens can change the meaning of a sentence, and are used for compound adjectives before a noun. Is it spell checker, spell-checker, or spellchecker?
Apostrophe placement
Here are a few common ones:
- boys, boy’s, or boys’ – The first refers to more than one boy. The second is used to denote one boy owning something, as in: “It’s the boy’s bicycle”. The third refers to more than one boy owning something, as in: “The boys’ bicycles were secured to the railings”.
- it’s or its – it’s means “it is”, as in: “It’s a nice morning”, i.e. “It is a nice morning”. its refers to the possessive of something, as in: “The city has many sports teams. Its football team attracts the largest crowd”.
- there, their, or they’re – there usually refers to a place. their is a possessive for people, as in: “Their house is next door”. they’re is a contraction of “they” and “are”, as in: “They’re going to travel to Switzerland this year”.
- your or your’re – your is possessive, as in: “I like your car”. you’re is a contraction for “you are”, as in: “You’re skilful at playing the guitar”.
Repeating sentence structures
It might not actually be incorrect. But it does feel wrong. You don’t realise what the problem is. Then you read your work. The sentences are monotonous. The words don’t flow well. Reading becomes heavy. Your text needs something more. And better. But you can’t identify the problem. There’s a simple way to improve your writing, though: introduce a few different sentence structures, and you’ll notice the improvement straightaway!
Missing articles and words
Most spellcheckers won’t find missing articles (a, an, the). There is mistake in this sentence. I say again, there is a mistake in this sentence – get it? A spellchecker might also not inform you that there are missing conjunctions such as and, or, or but.
And did you inadvertently type “an” somewhere instead of “and”?
EasyWriter provides a proofreading service; please use the Contact form as a starting point to discuss how we can be of assistance.