Beyond Spell-Check

I have a love-hate relationship with spell-check. On one hand, it’s the best. I am a notoriously bad speller. It was just never my strong suit, despite the fact that I always loved to write. My tiny second-grade-sized hands would fumble through our giant dictionary in search of correct spellings, dreaming of the day when I’d simply be able to push a button and get the correct spelling of words like “lieutenant,” “absorption” or “malaise.” I figured we’d get this spelling machine around the same time as flying cars.

But lo! We got a computer a couple years later, and on that computer was the magical spell-checker I’d always dreamt about. It was great! I’d type out my book report, hit “spell-check,” and I was off to the races. I was sure I’d get 100% on all my papers now. I mean, I had this machine to correct all my mistakes, what other score could the teacher possibly give me besides a perfect one?

After the first couple of papers, I realized I was still going to have to proofread. I was disenchanted. The spell-check feature on my word processing program wasn’t the cure-all I had imagined it to be. But even worse: it made me realize that I made OTHER mistakes. It was a very dark time for fourth-grade Sara.

Fast-forward to present day. Spell-check and I have learned to co-exist. Scratch that. I rely on spell-check to correct my many (many!) spelling errors, especially now that I work in a field where proofreading and spell-checking and Thesaurusing are part of everyday life.

However, in the same way spell-check provided my grade-school self with a false sense of perfection (and to a degree, encouraged sloppy, improper grammar), I think features like spell-check and auto-correcting grammar in today’s word processing software might inadvertently be causing more typos than if we all went about things the old-fashioned way.

As I was perusing the menu on a recent dinner date, I noticed about 20 typos. Now, it’s not like the guy writing the menu misspelled “hamburger” or anything. In fact, I didn’t see any spelling errors. No, the person writing the menu definitely used spell-check—but I think that’s where their proofreading stopped. The errors I saw were inconsistencies or flat-out mistakes. Run-on sentences, missing hyphens, prices listed in a variety of formats, cut-off food descriptions… you get the idea. A real mess. I nearly lost my appetite. Kidding! I got the prime rib.

This problem runs especially rampant in hotel marketing collateral. That is, it has the potential to be a nightmare without professional supervision. Just hitting spell-check and reading through something one time isn’t enough, especially when there are so many opportunities for inconsistencies. Is it in-room dining or room service? Neither one is wrong, but if you use both on five different pieces, your guests are probably going to notice.

The point is, each piece of marketing should be painstakingly scoured before it gets in front of guests. Even operational pieces like laundry forms and door hangers need to be proofed for errors. To abstain from doing so would be an erratum of magnanimous proportions (take that, spell-check!).