Proofreader versus Spellchecker

Proofreader versus Spellchecker

Susan Pierotti, Creative Text Solutions

He have hum, nor then, a food tine.

Hey, what’s that? Doesn’t make sense, does it? Yet, apart from a few spelling errors, it is an accurate, proper, legitimate sentence. No way, you say. But I assure you, apart from some typos, this is a dinky-die real sentence. You see, I typed on a computer keyboard and relied on the Spellchecker function to correct the mistakes. So, wasn’t my computer working as it should? Well, there’s actually nothing wrong with the computer. The reason it didn’t correct anything was because there was nothing to fix. What? True!

Spellcheckers are limited

The Spellchecker tool on a computer picks up spelling mistakes and in the above sentence, there are none — no spelling ones, that is. Every individual word is correctly spelt — yet it still doesn’t make sense, does it? To quote a famous physicist, why is it so? A computer keyboard uses the same letter layout as the old typewriters. (Remember those?) The typewriter manufacturers noticed that as typists, usually women, became fluent at typing, their fingers moved faster and faster, the end result being that the keys jammed. So the letters was deliberately arranged so to slow down the speed of typing. For instance, some of the most commonly used letters - a, d, e, r, s, t - are typed by the left hand, and not only are the q and the u a long way from the each other, they are typed by different hands. (There is a system downloadable on some programs called Dvorak which puts the letters into a more sensible arrangement, but like English spelling, most of us have grown up with the older clunkier version, and it’s too hard to change now. Besides, with Dvorak, you have to keep your old letter arrangement, meaning that to type the letter n, you need to press the l key. That’s serious multi-tasking!)

That's not what I typed!

The most common typos are caused by typing the key next to the one we want. A spellchecker won’t necessarily fix that. By replacing only one letter in most words with an adjacent one, we get the sentence quoted above: He have hum, nor then, a food tine. But a proofreader will be able to work out that it should read: She gave him, not them, a good time.

Hire a Proofreader

Ask yourself this question: would you rely on your Spellchecker again when you could employ a qualified proofreader to sort out your typos? Not only will any spelling errors be sorted out but a proofreader will adjust your text to suit the spelling style (Australian English, American English, government requirements etc.) And as a bonus, the proofreader will tweak grammar, tidy up formatting and make you look professional, leaving you time for all those creative ideas. A computer can’t do all that! Contact me at http://www.creativetext.com.au for all your proofreading needs.