 For Authors: May 29, 2024 Issue [#12571] |
This week: Spell Check and Auto-correct Edited by: Lilith đ Christmas Cheer  
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"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."
~ A. A. Milne
"When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations."
~ Marilyn vos Savant
"Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist."
~ William Raspberry
"I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it."
~ Rocky Graziano |
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As writers, we use devices that implement different programs and software with autocorrect and spell-check features. Although Autocorrect has made many advances in technology and has improved its ability to predict the correct words from misspelled words, there are still opportunities for mistakes or âAutocorrect failsâ within documents (and text messages) which are often unedited before our audience receives it.
 How Does Autocorrect Work?
Autocorrect corrects typos once the word is indicated to have been complete with punctuation or a space, this differs from spell check which will underline the word to indicate the word is spelled incorrectly. Some word misspellings are not corrected automatically if it is unclear what the correct word is supposed to be, for example, the word âItentedâ could
be any of âindentedâ, âintendedâ or âinventedâ.
What does Spell Check do?
Spell check identifies and corrects misspelled words. It does not, however, tell us we've used the WRONG word.
For example:
My neighbor asked me to walk there dog while they were away for the day.
I'm sure you very quickly spotted the error there. We must carefully read over our work and look into a grammar-checker to help catch those types of mistakes.
While some of those typos can be quite amusing, they can also harm the message/story we hope to share.
The moral here is to read over our manuscripts carefully. It can be helpful to have a friend read through our work too. Oftentimes, as we read and reread our work we tend to become blind to errors that others will easily spot.
What are some of the most common misspelled words:
accommodation
definitely
separate
calendar
cemetery
argument
conscientious
address
liaison
a lot
Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs
...and not picked up by autocorrect or spell check!
accept / except
sent / scent
sink / sync
chews / choose
band / banned
coarse / course
elicit / illicit
ad / add
affect / effect
cereal / serial
faze / phase
to / too / two
there / they're / their
your / you're
Test your skills!
Complete each of the following sentences by filling in the blank with the correct word. You'll find the answers at the end of the exercise. To heighten interest, all of the sentences are quotes from various authors' writings in books and magazine articles published over the years.
1. âHe simply sat down on the ledge and forgot everything _____ [accept or except] the marvelous mystery.â
~ Lawrence Sargent Hall
2. "I live in the Oakland Hills in a tiny house on a street so windy you canât drive more than ten miles per hour. I rented it because the _____ [ad or add] said this: 'Small house in the trees with a garden and a fireplace. Dogs welcome, of course.'"
~ Pam Houston
3. "Francis wondered what _____ [advice or advise] a psychiatrist would have for him."
~ John Cheever
4. "The _____ [aid or aide] gets out of the way, picking her skirt out of the rubble of children at her feet."
~ Rosellen Brown
5. "He seemed to want to recapture the cosseted feeling he'd had when he'd been sick as a child and she would serve him flat ginger _____ [ail or ale], and toast soaked in cream, and play endless card games with him, using his blanket-covered legs as a table."
~ Alice Elliott Dark
6. "He sat down and leaned forward, pulling the chair's rear legs into the _____ [air, ere, or heir] so that the waitress could get by."
~ Stanley Elkins
7. "[T]he stewardess was moving down the _____ [aisle, I'll, or isle], like a trained nurse taking temperatures in a hospital ward, to see that they were all properly strapped in for the take-off."
~ Martha Gellhorn
8. "Mrs. Parmenter laughed at his _____ [allusion or illusion] to their summer at Mrs. Sterrett's, in Rome, and gave him her coat to hold."
~ Willa Cather
9. "In the long years between, she had fashioned many fine dressesâgowned gay girls for their conquests and robed fair brides for the _____ [altar or alter]."
~ Mary Lerner
10. "On a Saturday morning soon after he came to live with her, he turned over her garbage while she was at the grocery store and _____ [ate or eight] rancid bacon drippings out of a small Crisco can."
~ Pam Durban
11. "The barn was bigger than a church, and the fall's fresh hay _____ [bails or bales] were stacked to the roof in the side mows."
~ John Updike
12. "Her two spare dresses were gone, her comb was gone, her checkered coat was gone, and so was the mauve hair-_____ [band or banned] with a mauve bow that had been her hat."
~ Vladimir Nabokov
13. "Without the shelter of those trees, there is a great exposureâback yards, clotheslines, woodpiles, patchy sheds, and barns and priviesâall _____ [bare or bear], exposed, provisional looking."
~ Alice Munro
14. "This was the time when outfields were larger than they are today and well-hit balls would roll for a long time, giving runners ample time to round the _____ [bases or basis] for a home run."
~ Deidre Silva and Jackie Koney
15. "The conductor had his knotted signal cord to pull, and the motorman _____ [beat or beet] the foot gong with his mad heel."â Saul Bellow
16. "Nancy held the cup to her mouth and _____ [blew or blue] into the cup."
~ William Faulkner
17. "A pigeon landed nearby. It hopped on its little red feet and pecked into something that might have been a dirty piece of stale _____ [bread or bred] or dried mud."
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
18. "He was wearing a new hat of a pretty biscuit shade, for it never occurred to him to _____ [buy, by, or bye] anything of a practical color; he had put it on for the first time and the rain was spoiling it.~ Katherine Anne Porter
Answers:
1. except 2. ad 3. advice 4. aide 5. ale 6. air 7. aisle 8. allusion 9. altar 10. ate 11. bales 12. band 13. bare 14. bases 15. beat 16. blew 17. bread 18. buy
(The 'test' above was located through a Google search)
Let me know how you did!
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Comments received from my last For Authors newsletter, "What's in a Sentence?" :
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