learntorp

I am going to start this post off with one important thing all of you should be doing already, and if you are not then you need to start doing it immediately: check the spelling in everything you write!

I cannot emphasize this point enough. Everyone makes mistakes when they type, and spellcheck will catch 90% of those errors. If your app, your post, or even your comments are riddled with spelling errors, it can be difficult to read. In fact, some games look at spelling when they make decisions on apps! You are only doing yourself a disservice by not using some kind of spellcheck program.

However, spellcheck will not always catch every error you make. Spellcheck only catches errors that do not spell any word correctly. If you typo a word, but it is actually an entirely different word, spellcheck will not make those red squiggly lines below it.

Here is a rather humorous example I saw once.

"So, that's what you're after," she said, running her finger up his shit suggestively, "Well, I think I can arrange that."

Now, it's plainly obvious that the person meant to write "shirt" instead of "shit". But shit still is a word, so spellcheck didn't make any indication that something was wrong with that response. The end result gave some interesting mental pictures, to say the least.

Another problem with spellcheck is that it is easy to ignore the lines if you're used to seeing them a lot. If you have a name or a proper noun that you type a lot, but it is not in the spell-check dictionary, you tend to expect to see the error markings on that name. Because of that, when you actually do misspell that word, you don't even realize it and you don't try to correct it because hey, that word is always underlined! I tend to play characters from video games, and I can't even tell you the number of times that has happened to me with their names.

EDIT (August 25th): A perfect example of this has just been brought to my attention. In my very first post on this tumblr, I misspelled roleplay as 'romeplay'. I didn't even notice this until someone sent me a message about it, since hey, roleplaying gets underlined every time I type it here! So even I make mistakes like that, it's something everyone has to keep an eye out for.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't use spellcheck at all. Spellcheck is a good tool that will catch a good number of errors that you would otherwise overlook. If you're not already using it, I definitely recommend that you start doing so. But you also need to be aware of the errors spell check will not catch.

An easy way to avoid this problem is to modify the spellchecker dictionary to suit your needs. You can add or take away any words you want, so I do that to accommodate any trends in my own typing I notice. The spellcheck on my computer has the names of all of my characters added to it, as well as my own (let me tell you, it is embarrassing as hell to misspell your own damn name) and any other terminology that is mentioned a lot in canon. I also have the words 'angle', 'county', and 'toll' removed from my spellchecker, since I type the words angel, country, and troll a lot. I wouldn't recommend doing this a lot, though, because at some point you really are going to have to talk about angles and then you'll wonder if you're spelling the word right or not. Keep it to words you mistype a lot.

This method is a good start, but keep in mind that it won't fix every instance of spellcheck messing up your tags. Proofreading is always your friend, especially on apps. Little errors on posts or tags can be overlooked, since not everyone is going to catch everything and it can be hilarious to tell your friends about their typos, but apps are supposed to be polished, pristine, and free of those kinds of errors. Don't rely only on spellcheck, use your own judgement as well.

For practice, go play this game: The Grading Game Some errors will be obvious, others will not.