... when you misspell a word that creates an unintended but correctly-spelled word. Like when you mean to write hockey (as in, a game) and you accidentally write hokey (as in, silly).
Spell check doesn't know you meant to write hockey. All it knows is hokey is spelled right. So it says you're okay, when you're not.
In another instance, we wrote that something as apart (one word, meaning separate from) of something else, when we meant to ay it was a part (two words, meaning connected to) of something.
Spell check never would have caught that you meant to say a part, because apart is spelled right too. It's just the wrong word.
Spell check won't even tell you that you spelled field as felid. That's because felid is a real word: it's a term for feline, believe it or not. (So field hockey essentially became cat hockey due to that misspelling.)
We can use spell check as a complement to -- but not a substitute for -- re-reading our work, from start to finish, and checking facts and figures and names and spellings line-by-line and word-by-word, with our own eyeballs.
The aforementioned examples actually happened to us in this exercise. Per the syllabus, anything that changes the meaning of a phrase, or any text error inside of a quote, and any misspelling of a proper name is a fact fatal. And a fact fatal is an automatic 1.0 on the assignment, no matter how well we do on everything else in an assignment.
That's because journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right. Especially what people tell us.
That's not the only scenario where spell check can trip you up. If you don't pay careful enough attention, spell check can also misspell names for you!
For example, let's say you write the name Adler. Adler a name, but it's not a word that's in the dictionary. So, spell check will probably flag Adler and suggest a change.
If you blindly click "okay" on everything spell check suggests that you change, odds are it'll change a name like Alder, which is a type of tree.
And for one of us, it may have. It's also a fatal, possibly thanks to over-reliance on and blind adherence to spell check.
Plus, we can never assume. One person's first name wasn't the common spelling of Stuart; it was the more unusual Stuard. We need to make sure we are spelling names precisely, and not acting on assumptions. Yes, this was a fatal, too.
Sorry we had to learn these the hard way, folks. Yes, this happened, too. But let's learn from them, and not let them happen again.
Spell check doesn't know you meant to write hockey. All it knows is hokey is spelled right. So it says you're okay, when you're not.
In another instance, we wrote that something as apart (one word, meaning separate from) of something else, when we meant to ay it was a part (two words, meaning connected to) of something.
Spell check never would have caught that you meant to say a part, because apart is spelled right too. It's just the wrong word.
Spell check won't even tell you that you spelled field as felid. That's because felid is a real word: it's a term for feline, believe it or not. (So field hockey essentially became cat hockey due to that misspelling.)
We can use spell check as a complement to -- but not a substitute for -- re-reading our work, from start to finish, and checking facts and figures and names and spellings line-by-line and word-by-word, with our own eyeballs.
The aforementioned examples actually happened to us in this exercise. Per the syllabus, anything that changes the meaning of a phrase, or any text error inside of a quote, and any misspelling of a proper name is a fact fatal. And a fact fatal is an automatic 1.0 on the assignment, no matter how well we do on everything else in an assignment.
That's because journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right. Especially what people tell us.
That's not the only scenario where spell check can trip you up. If you don't pay careful enough attention, spell check can also misspell names for you!
For example, let's say you write the name Adler. Adler a name, but it's not a word that's in the dictionary. So, spell check will probably flag Adler and suggest a change.
If you blindly click "okay" on everything spell check suggests that you change, odds are it'll change a name like Alder, which is a type of tree.
And for one of us, it may have. It's also a fatal, possibly thanks to over-reliance on and blind adherence to spell check.
Plus, we can never assume. One person's first name wasn't the common spelling of Stuart; it was the more unusual Stuard. We need to make sure we are spelling names precisely, and not acting on assumptions. Yes, this was a fatal, too.
Sorry we had to learn these the hard way, folks. Yes, this happened, too. But let's learn from them, and not let them happen again.
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