Your Brain: The Human Spell-checker

By Doug White
Online Reporter

As technological breakthroughs and the newest software programs continue to amaze us, Poynter president Jim Naughton reminds us that we must never rely on computers to take the place of our brains when copy editing.

Naughton says he is increasingly disturbed by the typos and basic grammatical mistakes that make it into print.

"I strongly encourage students to have a fundamental knowledge of language and grammar and not be overly reliant on computers," Naughton said. "There are books and newspapers full of typographical errors that the computer didn’t catch."

Oftentimes, spell-check won't detect absent words, extraneous or repeated phrases, or homonyms. Even though these errors are relatively minor goofs, Naughton said they add up.

"They are little mistakes, but we know from research that if the public doesn't think you can spell correctly or get the name of a street right, they certainly aren't going to give you credit for getting the big things right," he said.

One way to avoid publishing these simple mistakes is to print out a copy of your work after you've run the grammar- and spell-checker on your computer.

"The brain functions differently reading on paper than on the screen," Naughton said. "On screen things may look finished and polished, but I often find errors on printouts that I didn't find on the screen. Reading on paper is a good fail-safe."