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Adventures in Spell-Check
Last night I ran Microsoft’s spell-check on a 250-page novel. I always write with the spelling and grammar checks turned off because otherwise every page would be full of red and green squiggles.
I’m not a bad speller (hey, I was the second best speller in second grade!), but MS Word really hates my grammar. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if MS Word had its way, every poem would be a business letter.
Anyway, if I leave the spell-check until the end, I can worry about more important issues, like does this story make any sense whatsoever?
Last night’s spell-check revealed a great many boring typos and intentional misspellings (e.g., “He’s fiiine!”). But a few words I got so totally wrong I was actually thinking, “God bless spell-check!” as I corrected the mistakes.
Here are a few examples of my invented lexicon, whose meanings I can only guess at, Balderdash-style:
- Capuchino – caffeinated beverage of choice for professional monkeys on the go
- Criterium – the chemical element by whose qualities all other elements are judged
And my favorite:
- Mediocracy – system of government characterized by unexceptional leadership from the top down (I'm sure you can think of examples)
As I drafted Or NotI ran spell check every week on that weeks 10,000 words (my insane weekly quota). Sometimes you get some things to think about, grammar-wise, but mostly not. And it is excruciating to spell check even that much, but waaaay worse to have it on as you are trying to write.
Definitely!
One of the other reasons I leave spell-check to near-the-end is otherwise I'd be tempted to run it all the time as a means of procrastination. I have the same problem with the word count tool. :-) Having a system for when you're allowed/supposed to do it sounds like a good way to go.