Spell Check Addiction: Symptoms and Cure

Your pen rolls of your desk and thuds to the floor. You pick it up and put it back. It rolls off again. I'm betting this will not happen to many times before you find a new home for your pen. Why then, did spell check correct your spelling of "correspondence" for the fourth time -- since lunch?

It doesn't take long to correct each instance of that habitual misspelling, but it does take time. If you frequently misspell words you use on a daily basis, the time spent correcting them will add up quickly. It also sets you up for another problem: the times when there is no spell check fix readily available. Do you find yourself putting words into a search engine just to get the "did you mean" suggestion? That might be a bad sign.

Cure:

How do you turn this around? Next time you spell check an email or document don't just pick the right word from the list. Take a second to find the difference between the correct version and what you typed. If you make an effort to look at the words, you will likely start to see patterns emerge after just a few documents or emails. Once you have identified a "trouble word" or habit (such as transposing letters), take note of it. Just write it down on a piece of scratch paper.

The next time you get a free second pick a word off the list, get the correct spelling of the word and write it several time. Don't just blindly copy it over and over. Spell it out in your mind and think about each letter. Write it this way about five time, then spell it back to yourself aloud. Combined with your initial effort of identifying the trouble critter in the first place this should have you spelling the word correctly. Over time, your list of misspelled word will start to contain only exotic pets -- like the Kinkajous.

Symptom 2: Spell Checker Induced Slur

You just sent out an important email. Twenty minutes later you get this response. " I don't understand how sexuality affects our sales. I'm very upset by your attitude and have forwarded your message to human resources." The answer of course is it doesn't have anything to do with sexuality, the word you clobbered was seasonality.

About eight times in ten the first suggestion that pops up in spell check is the word you meant. Of the remaining two times the top result is a word you've never heard of, and the other time it is a word that can pass as correct at a quick glance.

Cure:

Applying the first fix will help most of the time here. Look at what you typed, then look at the suggestion and find the difference. However, when it is crucial that all heathen typos be vanquished, having your virtual secretary read it to you might be a good idea. Microsoft's Office program offers this option. Recent versions of this program include a text to speech capability. Let Word read the document back to you. You are likely to hear differences you didn't see.

Symptom 3: Bleeding Documents

The theater lights are dim and the main character is about to reveal his true identity. From somewhere in the projectionist's booth a light shines down targeting an errant bit of popcorn bouncing across the floor. The lights come up and a red clad usher scurries over to it with a broom and swishes it away. Then the lights dim again. Five minutes ago it was a stray jelly bean. This theater might be clean, but I doubt you will be back.

That's the experience you create for yourself with that nice helpful red line that appears under every typo. It's designed to reduce the number of misspellings you will need to catch using the traditional spell checker. That saves time right? Probably not. Think about the process involved here. You are typing away and you misspell a word. You then have to take your hand off the keyboard and right click with the mouse, fix the typo and go back to work.

Not only does this slowly increase the editing time for your document, it breaks your train of thought. You have to shift mental gears from the creative to the analytical and then back again. It's a harsh transition that some writers have gone monastic extremes to avoid.

Take for example the writing program called Dark Room (and it's many clones). This program's claim to fame is not an astounding feature set, but rather a complete lack of features. When launched, the program takes over your entire screen showing you just green text on a black background. There is no spell check (underline or otherwise). The idea is to keep your focus on creating the document. Such a life is not for all of us, but turning of the little red line might be a nice bit of moderation we can all live with.

Dark Room:

http://they.misled.us/dark-room
Using Text To Speech in MS Office:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010565111033.aspx

Kinkajous (in case you though I made it up):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkajou