Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses
Posted on September 21, 2006
Filed under Advanced, Listening, Writing skills |
Why is it that you only see those pesky, embarrassing typos in important pieces of writing AFTER they’ve gone to press? Like this one from one of my own archives:
…he never fully recovered from the pubic humiliation of having his…
I’ve never fully recovered from that particular "pubic humiliation" either. When you work with words for a living, you really can’t afford to let mistakes like that slip by. And even if writing isn’t your profession, typos can still make you look careless at best, ignorant at worst. Modern spell checkers are useful tools, of course, but they don’t catch everything. My spell checker didn’t save me from the unfortunate "pubic incident" because spell checkers highlight only words that they can’t find in their dictionaries. Pubic is a perfectly good word, just incorrectly wielded in this context. But why didn’t I see it myself?
I didn’t catch the typo myself because my brain, expecting to find the word public, filled in the missing L. Our brains are masters at getting us to see what our experience and expectations tell us we should see. Thus the pubic/public problem wasn’t the only typo that managed to slip by in that text: I tend to flip letters when I type, and there were several instances where I’d typed form instead of from; my brain, doing what brains like to do, had quite merrily transposed the letters back into their correct positions as I proofread because it knew what I had meant to type.You’ve probably already thought of a few things your own fingers tend to fumble over when typing.
Everyone has been guilty of letting a typo slip through at some point, so your ego can probably recover from what are obvious mechanical errors. But what if you happened to let one of the pet peeves of eighth-grade English teachers slip unnoticed into your writing when you’re not looking, unspeakable horrors such as writing loose when you mean lose? Of course you know the difference between loose and lose, but when your deadline is imminent and you’re writing in a last-dash, coffee-fueled frenzy, it’s easy to read right past this kind of slip-up. And there are plenty of uncharitable people in the world who will not see it as a mere slip-up, but rather as a grave indication that you have the intelligence of a turnip. (Note: I am not one of those people!)
So you can’t trust your spell checker or even your own brain when it comes to proofreading your own texts. It sounds like a hopeless case, doesn’t it? Luckily, it’s not. Here are two proofreading methods that can help:
1) Enlist the help of a second reader to help you proofread. It works like this. Your friend slowly and carefully reads aloud from a hard copy while you silently read either the online version or another hard copy. Because the text is new to your friend, her brain is not as likely as you are to fix mistakes as she reads along. Between the two of you, you’ll catch far more errors than you would on your own. You then correct them on the online copy while your friend watches to make sure that you don’t inadvertently add another error. Don’t have a second reader available? Then point 2 is for you.
2) Use text-to-speech software in place of a second reader. You read silently on the hard copy (you’ll catch more errors on a hard copy than you will online) while the text-to-speech software reads the text aloud to you. You will be surprised at how many errors you catch this way, errors that you probably never would have noticed when reading silently to yourself. Mark the changes on the hard copy, and then VERY CAREFULLY enter them into the online copy.
Of course, no method is guaranteed to catch everything. But if you use either text-to-speech software or a second reader, you will have done just about everything you can to minimize the risk of pub(l)ic humiliation because of unfortunate typos. Good luck!
Note: this post is part of a “how to” group writing project over at ProBlogger.net.
Links:
Microsoft reader
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/downloads/pc.asp
Microsoft text-to-speech engine (choose your language)
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downloads/tts.asp
How To Configure and Use Text-to-Speech in Windows XP (Microsoft Knowledge Base)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306902/
How to automate Excel Text to Speech in another Office program
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287120/
How to configure Text to Speech for Microsoft Word
http://www.gmayor.com/word_text_to_speech.htm (this is the method I use myself)
Free text-to-speech software
http://www.naturalreaders.com/index.htm
http://www.readplease.com/english/downloads/
http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/ (looks good – integrates with MS Word)
For-purchase text-to-speech software
http://www.tanseon.com/products/voicemx.htm (free trial version)
http://www.alivemedia.net/textspeech.htm (free trial version)
http://www.fog-ware.com/products/ispeak.htm (no demo, but looks good)
Your continued donations keep B@E free!
Add to del.icio.us | Digg | reddit | StumbleUpon
Comments
34 Responses to “Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses”
Leave a Reply
Instructions: Record a message and tell us what you think of our English lessons, podcasts, website or anything related to English language learning. You an also ask questions about English vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc., or request topics for Real English Conversations. We love hearing from you! - Lori and Michael
-
Recent
-
Donate
-
Podcast levels
-
Categories
-
Topics
-
Archives
-
Links
-
Copyright
-
-
-
Featured sites
-
Subscribe
-
About Better@English
Better at English: Free English lessons to help you learn English vocabulary, idioms, slang, grammar, and more! Our short, fun English podcasts are perfect for busy people who don't have much time to study or who think that traditional English lessons are boring — you just need a few minutes a day to have fun learning conversational English at Better@English. read more »»
-
Get in touch
Subscribe by e-mail
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
Hey, great post! I found it through the ProBlogger.net contest. I’m glad to see there are more blogs out there dedicated to improving English. There are way too many typos in this world! Your post will surely help make some of them disappear.
Thanks Lori,
I’m a shocking speller and always seeing spelling mistakes that I make online.
Quite often I find them in my blogs refferal logs when some when someone has mis-spelled a search term and ended up at my site.
Dominic.
Very funny and true to life! I never heard of text-to-speech software–interesting. Nothing beats two sets of eyes, though.
neat idea, text to speech software for it…i’m in the middle of proofreading a book…i had to tuck it away for awhile, otherwise i didn’t pick up on typos..
This is oh, so very true! It (painfully) reminds me of a time when I was working as an advertising editor and had about 30 things to go out in an hour. Someone brought a proof for a huge billboard to me to proofread and swore it was ready to go, just needed me to sign off. Luckily, I noticed that the word “public” had been misspelled to leave out the “L”!!! Imagine how that would have been if it had gone out without being proofread by one more set of eyes!
This is a great post! Keep up the good work.
BTW — my how to is up as well if you’d like to visit it. Have a great day!
I love the idea of using speech recognition to read the article back to you. I haven’t thought or used that method, but I am going to try it. Thanks for the great tip!
LOL great example. That’s a great idea for spell-checking, thanks! Our how-to is up as well if you’d like to check it out!!
Thanks for stopping by and for the nice feedback, everyone. It was happy thing to come home to after working a 12-hour day with virtually no breaks (a teacher’s work sooooo is NEVER done). Great story, Lynn!
For the record, text-to-speech proofing is probably overkill for informal writing, but if it’s something that’s going to be published, or where careless mistakes would really make you look bad, it’s totally worth doing. Now if they only made something that could fix the mistakes I make while writing on the whiteboard and talking at the same time.That is waaay harder than it looks.
I need one of those!
Thanks for the post.
Nifty! Although I pitch reading out loud in my own problogger entry, (http://www.thegoldenpencil.com/2006/09/18/how-to-proofread-your-own-writing/ ) I never thought of having a friend read to me… or my computer either… which is why I blogged witing entries in the contest, including yours. Great idea
A
This is great! I have become so dependent on spell-check. It is sickening! Thanks for participating in the Group Writing Project. My How To is up also.
This is great! I have become so dependent on spell-check. It is sickening! Thanks for participating in the Group Writing Project. My How to is up also.
[...] Lori from Better English wins a weeks complimentary stay at a beach front apartment in Estepona on the Costa del Sol Spain which was kindly donated by New Homes on Nubricks.com. Lori’s post was Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses. [...]
Thanks Lori, I’ll be proofreading my dissertation next week so no excuses now! And congrats on the problogger prize.
Congratulation for being a winner!
My submission for group project is here.
[...] How to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses [...]
[...] 36. Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
Congratulations on being a winner in the problogger how-to’s! This is a great post and one that I can relate to - almost too well. I have found the one thing that also helps is to read whatever you have written backwards, that way you focus on the words. I have caught many spelling mistakes this way. My how to on Saving Your Money was proofread and I still found a few mistakes when I read it again after I posted it! I am going to take advantage of the Opera browsers read aloud feature from now on.
Exhaustive Blogging How Tos…
The group writing project at Problogger was a rousing success with 343 entries. Topics written on ranged from fertility issues (several) to web design and manners. The 4 winners were chosen randomly and are no doubt jumping for joy at……
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
lol… My how to is up.
Great post! I got caught too…had to read and reread it several times until I finally saw what was wrong (but not until you pointed out what it was)! Great resources, too.
Matt, no shame in using spell checkers — sometimes a “quick ‘n’ dirty check is all you’ve got time for. I’d be lost without mine…
Mark, good luck with your diss (and at your viva!)
Bee, thanks for the additional tip. You can never have too many weapons in your proofing artillery, our brains being so good at seeing what’s “supposed to be” there rather than what’s actually there.
Olivia, I’m guessing you mean the pubic/public example? If so, I’m glad it managed to trick you (well, trick your brain!) — that’s exactly the effect I was going for.
Glad the resources were useful.
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses by Lori [...]
[...] As an author, proofreading is vital to a successful article. Better at English shares a few simple steps to catch those pesky grammatical errors your spell checker thinks are fine. [...]
This post reminded me of an incident a few years ago when I was a teacher. I typed in a student’s report that she “should check her spalling more carefully.” The computer spell check accepted it and I missed it. (”Spalling” is a term used in sculpture). I had a good laugh and corrected it before the report went home. And I learned a new word by accident.
[...] Proofread like a Pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses - Some very useful hints written by Lori on her blog called Better at English. [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses [...]
[...] Proofread like a pro [...]