Proofreading for spelling
Do you have to be a perfect speller to be a proofreader?
Below is a transcript of the video.
As a proofreader, of course, one of the big things that you’re going to be expected to catch are spelling errors. Now, does this mean you have to be an absolutely perfect speller who knows the spelling of every single word on the planet? Of course not. We all have certain words that we have to think twice about.
But what it does mean is that you’ll need two things:
1. A reliable dictionary.
2. A sense of where the landmines are. By which I mean the common errors that trip people up.
Now, I think there are four different types of spelling errors that you’ll find in a document, each one presenting a different challenge to you as proofreader. So let’s look at the first of those four types, which is ‘basic typos’.
Proofreading for Typos
So typos, or typographical errors to use their full name, are errors that result from a wrong keystroke rather than a confusion about the spelling. So in other words, these errors originate from the writer’s fingers rather than in their brain.
Common typos include:
t-e-h for the.
htis for this.
Or a-d-n for and
Now a common spellchecker will catch all these typos because the resulting letters don’t form words. But you may be proofing someone else’s document that they’ve not spellchecked so it’s worth keeping your eye out for these.
Also, there are common typos that spellcheck might not pick up because they create a word that does exist.
One of the most common is form for from of course. Other examples might include lean for learn or, an embarrassing one here, pubic for public.
And, in fact, autocorrect might actually introduce typos by guessing the wrong word after a slipshod keystroke - like changing brids to birds instead of brides.
2. Proofreading for ‘mental block’ words
The second type of spelling mistake to look out for is what I’d call ‘mental block’ words. These are words that spellchecker will pick up if your author has used a spellcheck, but if they haven’t they can still creep through. And these are words which may be quite common but which many people struggle to remember.
For me, mental block words include words like:
Bureaucracy - does the e-a-u bit come before or after the r? And is that a c at the end or an s?
Parallel - is it one r or two, and how many l’s was it again?
And necessary, which I always have to remember by saying to myself ‘never eat cress, eat salad sandwiches and remain young’.
Now, the point about words like these isn’t that you have to remember them every single time. You just have to be aware that you have a weakness for them - or that others might have a weakness for them - and that they’re always worth double-checking.
In fact, one thing you might want to have to hand when you’re proofreading is a list of commonly misspelled words. I’ll put a link in the resources to one (enrol in the Writing School to access the resources, along with the rest of the course).
3. proofreading for homophones
A third type of spelling landmine is ‘homophones’, and these are possibly the trickiest landmine of all, because they’re words that are pronounced the same but spell differently and with different meanings.
There are many, many homophones - too many to go into detail here, but some common ones include little words like:
to, too and two
it’s and it’s
who’s and whose
And other common words like:
affect and effect
peak, peek and pique
rain, rein and reign
principle and principal
and
discreet and discrete
Again, you don’t necessarily need to be able to instantly know if a word is correct in the context of your document. But you do need to be aware that with word pairs like the ones we’ve just seen, even careful writers can struggle to remember them and get them right. So you need to have a sort of internal alarm system about all the possible homophones of a certain word.
There’s a great book called ‘Whose Who’s’ by Philip Gooden, which is a handy guide to easily confused words.
And, separately, I’ve created a series of videos available on my website and on YouTube with clear explanations of some of the most common homonyms - and handy tips on how to remember which word to use - I’ll put links to those in the resources. (If you enrol in the Writing School you’ll get access to the resources, along with some additional exercises to test your understanding).
4. Proofreading for geographical differences in spelling
The fourth and final landmine you need to be aware of is geographical differences in spelling, for example the difference between UK and US spelling.
Now, which one you choose will depend on your readership, your publication, the style guide you are using. And what matters most is that you are consistent, that you’re not mixing up different geographical spellings. We’ll get onto consistency in a future lecture. (To access the whole course, along with other courses on writing, enrol in our Writing School). In the meantime, here are some of the most common differences between UK and US spelling.
In some suffixes, that’s endings, where UK spelling mostly uses an s, the US would replace the s with a z. For example:
recognise > recognize
analyse > analyze
rationalisation > rationalization
The z spelling seems to be the spelling that most annoys snobby English traditionalists who consider it a gross and overly modern Americanism.
But some English style guides, such as that followed by Oxford University Press, prefer this z spelling - because it’s actually an older form, reflecting the Greek origins of the suffix, where -ise is a relatively modern, French spelling.
Some other differences.
Words that end in -our in the UK appear in the US as -or.
For example:
colour > color
and
humour > humor
Words ending in -re in the UK end in -er in the US.
Such as:
theatre > theater
and
centre > center
In certain words in the UK, you find a double consonant which would have a single consonant in the US. For example:
labelling > labeling
and
targetted > targeted
And certain words - often medical ones - have an ae or oe in the UK which would just have an e in the US. Examples would be:
foetus > fetus
and
haemoglobin > hemoglobin
So those are the most important differences between UK and US spelling. There are other less common ones, and I’ll put a link to a comprehensive list in the resources for you to refer to. (Enrol in the Writing School to access the resources).
In the meantime, coming up next is an exercise designed to test your ability to spot all four types of spelling landmine that we’ve looked at in this lecture. So do check it out and have a go! (Enrol in the Writing School to get access to the exercise).
For more proofreading advice, enrol in the full online course, Proofread Like a Pro, available at the Doris and Bertie Writing School.
