Don’t Trust Your Spell Check

Don’t Trust Your Spell Check tackles proofreading and copy editing from a different perspective.

It shows you why we make mistakes, what mistakes we regularly make, and how to spot mistakes before you print or publish content. It also includes over 25 proofreading tests, designed to develop and improve proofreading skills.

Poor attention to detail can be disastrous.

Wince at the US high school, which had a sign inviting parents to a ‘laeping to literacy night’; pity the department store that proudly advertised its grand opening in ‘Febuary 2010’. A spell check would have caught these particular errors. But it won’t catch every goof and gaffe. It wouldn’t have objected to the way a Baltimore news channel once subtitled Prince Harry as the ‘Prince of Whales’. Neither would it spot the four errors in the sentence ‘Simone painted his finger the boy and smiled wicked smile’.

In Don’t Trust Your Spell Check, veteran writer/editor Dean Evans explains:

• The difference between proofreading and copy editing
• What happens if you don’t proofread
• Why we can’t stop making stupid mistakes
• What stupid mistakes we can’t stop making
• Why we don’t spot these stupid mistakes
• How to improve your copy editing to eradicate errors
• How to improve your proofreading to destroy all typos
• How a style guide can be a proofreader’s cheat sheet
• How to improve your concentration
• Why computers can’t proofread 

Since 1992, Dean Evans has written hundreds of thousands of words from technology news and movie reviews to celebrity interviews and books (like this one). Dean is the founder of The Good Content Company (UK) Ltd, which provides copywriting/freelance writing services and time-saving content creation tools. He is also the author of 'The Good Content Code' and 'Write Great Headlines Every Time'.