How Does Spellchecker make you Lazy?
It’s a crime what laziness can do. That’s the downside of
automation and software tools. People get lazy.
Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and I depend on
Spell-checking software to help with my writing. It finds
the typos but it does not find all the spelling mistakes.It
does not find the contextual mistakes. What do I mean by
that?
Here’s an example: “The kid’s got heat.”
Maybe, the “kid” is a pitcher with a really wicked
fastball. Or maybe, I meant to type “heart” as in:
“The kid’s got heart.”
The absence of one letter can give you two wildly different
interpretations. Ol’ Robodunce, spellchecker won’t spot
gaffs like that.
Remember, in school how you used to struggle over the proper
usage of “there, they’re, and their?” Some people still
struggle with those. Grammar can be pretty tricky, so tricky
that a computer designed solely to correct grammatical
mistakes would have to be the size of a Pontiac, or even a
cruise ship. It would take a truckload of Einsteins to
program it.
That leaves you, my friend, You, the author- the last line
of defense.
For the sake of your readers, for the sake of clarity and
for the sake of personal pride…Proofread it! Read it out
loud. Read it again and again just to be sure. Do you want
potentially millions of people to think you are a bonehead?
Every day surfing the web I encounter site after site with
so many errors; obvious stuff that a
3rd Grader could pick
up on. These people are just too darned busy building
pop-ups to proofread their copy. Rush, rush, rush.
And these are people trying to sell me things! Do I want to
buy from a Bonehead? Not bloody likely.
You may have noticed this is a pet peeve of mine. That
being said, a person that does not pay attention to the
little details of publishing online may not pay attention to
all the little details of good service. I can’t imagine that
I am the only one that jumps to that conclusion.
It could cost you a lot in sales and/or credibility.
Proofread. Take the time before you upload. Don’t be a
Bonehead.
-David Parton
Copyright 2005
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