Spell Check

...the most common, and least reliable, way to check your document for spelling errors.

Most often a spell or grammar check will not catch homonyms--you know, words that sound alike but don't have to be spelled the same, like there, their and they're.

You'll think twice about relying on it after you read the following poem that's been floating around on the internet. My skeptical nature forced me to paste the poem into Word and run the spelling and grammar check. Not suprisingly, Word indicated only a few sentences from the entire poem had problems. Definitely an eye-opener.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
by Renni Browne and Dave King
cover
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Words Fail Me
by Patricia T. O'Conner
cover
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PS. If you know who deserves credit for this masterpiece, let me know.

Letter Perfect

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
Eye am shore your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.