spell check

Never Rely Solely on Spell Check

Isn’t spell check convenient? If it doesn’t like the word you used, it points it out to you, and in a couple of clicks, it’s all fixed up. But just how much can we trust spell checkers? Speaking from experience, not very much! Sure, it’s handy when you’ve just made a little typo, but it has fatal drawbacks that can see you submitting work with confidence only for it to be ripped apart by your reader or teacher. Here are 10 reasons why careful proofreading is the only solution if you want to submit correct work.

It Won’t Identify Homophones

There are pairs of words that mean different things and are spelled differently, but don’t mean the same thing. Here are a few examples:

There and their: A lot of people struggle with this one!
They’re and there: Brits are particularly prone to confuse these two!
Air and heir: Well, they sound the same, don’t they?
Die and dye: I saw a hair salon in Sweden called “Curl up and Dye,” cute as a play on words, but not as an error.
Effect and affect: Confusing these words is one of the most common errors among English speakers. Get it right!

It Won’t Identify Misspelled Words That Are Real Words

I have a lot of fun collecting these words. They can be hilarious or simply embarrassing. For example:

Pubic and public: Are you ready for pubic humiliation?
From and form: Oops! Your fingers were too hasty there! Spell check thinks its fine, though.
Best and beast: The beast doctor in town… Could it be a veterinarian? Or is it something more sinister?
Retards and regards: I had this one from a friend of mine. It’s probably not the best way to sign off a business letter.
Human resources and inhuman resources: There was meant to be a space in the second example.
Singing and sinning. Of course, you could possibly sing while you sin, but it would be unusual.

Your Grammar Could Be Awful

Although spell check will occasionally pick up grammatical errors, it generally doesn’t, and some of the things it thinks are wrong are actually right. For example, Microsoft Word doesn’t like “your” in the sentence to follow. It suggests “you’re, but it is mistaken:

“You’re incomplete or tangled sentences get the green light from spell check, but later on, they make you cringe with embarrassment. If only you’d done a more careful proofread instead of trusting spell check!”

“You’re,” oh dear! That’s a blooper from spell check right there!

Editing Helps You Learn Your Errors

I so often type “form” instead of “from,” that I know I need to check my work carefully when this word is involved. It’s all too easy for one’s eyes to slide right over that error. After all, the letters are all there, they’re just not in the right place. Now that I know I often tangle my fingers over the word, I know I have to check it carefully.

You Begin to Depend on It

Right clicking for spelling suggestions when you’re stumped as to why the word keeps coming up as being misspelled makes you super-lazy. Always try to correct words without spell check’s help to begin with, and if you still can’t get it right, see what spell check suggests. I keep a list of words I struggle to spell so that I can learn from it. It really has helped me to improve my spelling!

You Won’t Be Able to Write Quickly When You Need To

Pictures this: you’re in a skype interview with someone you hope to impress. You can’t wander off to check your spelling every few seconds as you quickly type. Bam! Bam! Bam! The person on the other end wants a quick response. Make too many spelling errors, and you end up looking like a hopeless incompetent. Impressive? Hardly!

It Doesn’t Know Your Terminology

Terminology lurks in every field, and accepted spellings don’t always agree with spell check. For example, most people these days refer to “startups” but Microsoft’s spell checker has only recently caught on to the term. A few months ago, it suggested “start-ups” as the right spelling. Medical terminology and other scientific jargon often doesn’t feature, and pitfalls lurk behind every terminology-laden sentence.

It Has No Idea What You Really Mean

Writing conveys meaning, but spell check has no notion of meaning. You can say “infection” instead of “affection” and have your writing end up looking kind of scary. Or you can emulate my friend and sign off your covering letter with a cheery “Kind retards.” Only you can know what you actually meant, so don’t trust your software too much.

It Doesn’t Always Spot Words Accidentally Split With a Space

As long as both words are real words on their own, spell check acts dumb. Why? Because it’s rather dumb! Check these words out:

All ways versus always
Some times versus sometimes
In stead versus instead
Never the less instead of nevertheless
Sun day versus Sunday

You’re Smarter Than Spell Check!

No software can ever replace the human mind. I’ve tried grammar checkers, spell checkers, and style checkers, and they are all only tools that can be used wisely in the hands of an informed human being. Just as no machine can write properly for you, spell checkers and grammar checkers will always be less intelligent than your own proofreading.

Title Capitalization, Spell Check and More New Word Counter Tools

This word counter tool originally counted words, characters, and letters. As more people found it, we started to get requests of what the users would like to see added to the tool. Over the years, we have added many of these suggestions. We continue to strive to keep this tool updated and to add new features which users have requested which make word counter more beneficial to all. We recently added the following features which you can now use:

Spell and Grammar Check

We’ve added a button to the top left of the Word Counter tool which says “Spell Check” Once you have finished writing, you can click this button and a spell and grammar check will be performed on what you have written and will highlight areas of the writing that may be grammatically incorrect or have spelling issues. It’s important to note that this shouldn’t be exclusively relied upon, and as with all writing, you should proofread what you have written, but it may catch some minor errors you missed or show you an area of your writing which may be able to be more clearly rewritten.

Different Cases

There may be instances where you want to have your writing (or certain portions of your writing) displayed in a certain way. The “Case” button just to the right of the “Spell Check” button gives you four options to display your writing in different ways. There are two ways to use this. You can highlight a certain portion of your writing, and only the highlighted portion will be affected by your choice. For example, if you highlight your first paragraph and choose “Uppercase,” then only the first paragraph will be turned to upper case and the rest of the writing will remain as it was. If you choose one of the options without highlighting any of your writing, the entire writing will be formatted by the choice you made. The four choices available are:

Uppercase: WHEN YOU CHOOSE THIS OPTION, ALL WRITING WILL BE DISPLAYED IN UPPERCASE LIKE THIS. iT’S THE SAME AS PUSHING THE CAPS LOCK ON YOUR KEYBOARD.

Lowercase: when you choose this option, all writing will be displayed in lowercase like this. even after periods, the letters will all be in lowercase.

Title Case: Also referred to as title capitalization, this gives the proper way to capitalize titles for your writing, articles and blog posts. It can often get confusing which words should and shouldn’t be capitalized in the title of the paper, and by choosing this option, it will automatically give you the correct way to display it. For example, the title of this article, “Title capitalization, spell check and more new word counter tools” gets transformed to “Title Capitalization, Spell Check and More New Word Counter Tools” when the title case option is used.

Sentence Case: This options will turn all the writing to a typical sentence construction. This can be convenient if you happen to forget to capitalize after periods, or if you tried some of the other case options, but decide you want to back to normal.

Reading Level

On the right side under “Details”, there is now a section at the bottom that displays Reading Level. The reading level is calculated by using the Dale–Chall readability formula based on 3,000 common words fourth graders understand. This can be useful if you’re writing to a certain age group to make sure your writing isn’t above or below their level.

Keyword Density Options

Under “Options” (top right corner) you can now choose the number of keywords you want displayed for keyword density. The default has been 10 words, but you can choose as few or as many as you wish to fit the particular type of writing you’re doing.

If there are other tools you’d like to see added to word counter, feel free to contact us or to leave a comment. We try to continue to add and update WordCounter.net with things the users would find beneficial.