Here is the latest installment of a series I started a year ago to help remind all my connections of the dangers of believing in spellcheck. Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE spellcheck! It has saved me many times from embarrassing errors (spelling is not one of my strengths).
But spellcheck does only one thing well: it spells. It knows if a word is spelled correctly. It does NOT know if a word is used correctly. That’s what we writers have to be alert for: those pesky words known as homophones (words that sound alike — or nearly so — but mean something different and are spelled differently). If we want to be seen as thoroughly professional, we need to be “on our toes” with this!
Now I don’t expect anyone to memorize all the possible problem words; I often look words up myself online (isn’t that a wonderful thing we can do?). I use the YourDictionary.com site because it shows many different definitions from several dictionaries, not just one. You can get a really good lesson just looking through those definitions!
You might notice that one of the pairs — incompetence and incompetents — is also an example of using “in” to mean “not.”
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My blogs are all on my Web site, GrammarGoddess.com, where they’re grouped by categories so you can easily choose which to read first. I hope you find many to enjoy and learn from.