The magical art of spelling

Most of us have certain words that we have trouble spelling correctly. For some of us, no matter how hard we try, we stumble over the same words again and again. Poor spelling can make us appear unprofessional or uneducated, and most of us try hard to get it right. Fortunately, these days most writers come armed with the tools to overcome these problems. Few of us write with a pen and paper these days. Most of our writing is done at a keyboard, and our word-processing software is likely to come with a helpful spell-checking tool. So before you send off that important document to your boss, or that email of complaint, or your memoir or autobiography to the printers, you can ensure that you have not let any silly spelling mistakes sneak through. Phew!

The bad news is that spell-checking software is not one hundred per cent reliable. There are some situations where it takes a real human being to spot the mistake, because a computer simply does not have the capability. For example, words that sound the same such as 'there' and 'their' are often mixed up and misplaced. It is up to the human proofreader to make sure that words like these are used correctly, as a computer may not pick up subtle differences in meaning. The sentence "There proofreading used to be better" would be considered correct by spell-checking software. So too would "Their proofreading used to be better". It takes a human pair of eyes to assess whether or not the word is spelt correctly in this kind of situation.

So you think you can spell? Let's put your skills to the test. Here are ten commonly misspelt words. Half of them are spelt correctly; half are not. Can you spot the five words that are spelt incorrectly? Do you know the correct spelling? If not, you may be in need of a professional proofreader…

1 Seperate
2 Broccoli
3 Definately
4 Embarass
5 Referred
6 Conscience
7 Connosseur
8 Paralel
9 Supersede
10 Consensus

Answers: seperate, definately, embarass, connosseur and paralel are all misspelt. The correct spellings are: separate, definitely, embarrass, connoisseur and parallel.

If you want the reassurance of knowing that your document is free from spelling mistakes, please get in touch. I will be happy to proofread it for you!