Spelling-checkers

2. Checking your work by using a spell-checker will help to highlight and correct commonly mis-spelt words such as accommodation, parallel, recommend, and silhouette. 

3. The checker will also highlight mis-keyed words such as 'hte' for 'the' or 'nad' for 'and'. Depending upon your processor, you may either choose the correct word from a list, or it may offer you the opportunity to reverse the mis-keyed letters. 

4. It will not be able to recognize specialist terms and unusual proper nouns - names such as Schumacher, Derrida, or Nabokov. These will not be in the processor's memory. You will have to check the correct spelling of these yourself, as you would do with any other unusual words. 

5. Remember that a spell-checker will not alert you to a mistake if you write 'They washed there own clothes' instead of 'They washed their own clothes'. This is because the word 'there' is spelt correctly even though it is being used ungrammatically in this sentence. The same would be true of 'It is over hare' instead of 'It is over here', because 'hare' exists in its own right as a correctly spelt word. 

6. Most spell-checkers will spot unwanted double words such as 'going to to the fair', and will offer you the opportunity to delete the second occurrence. But they will not notice anything wrong with a word broken by a space such as 'to morrow', because these two terms exist in their own right as separate words. 

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7. The checker will not alert you to any mistake if you key the word 'practice' instead of 'practise', because both words exist separately. The same would be true of 'advise' and 'advice'. 

8. If you decide to add to the processor's memory names which are frequently used in your own subject discipline (Freud, Jung, Adler or Marx, Engels, Bukharin) make sure that you enter them correctly spelt. 

9. Beware of adding too many names which might be thrown up in the checking of your document. Some proper nouns may be the same as mis-spelt words. If you were to add 'Fischer' to the dictionary as a name, this would mean that the spell-checker would not alert you to a problem if you mis-keyed 'fisher' as 'fischer'. 

10. Beware of adding to your processor's dictionary just because it is easy and seems a profitable thing to do. You might for instance add your own postcode of SE9 6OY - but if you then mis-keyed the word TOY as 6OY the spell-checker would not then be able to pick up your mistake. It would assume that you wished to regard 6OY as an acceptable 'word'. 

11. A spell check is usually performed after all your text has been generated and edited. Many people argue that it is no use correcting a spelling if the word may be deleted at a later stage of editing. However, there are good arguments for using the checker at earlier stages of writing. Spacing and layout may be affected; the document will be in a reasonable 'good' condition at any given stage; and it may eliminate the necessity for a SEARCH and REPLACE procedure at a later stage. 

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