Just when you thought that “Word to Your Mother” was a new low in blog titles, we hit you with “STOP Grammar Time!” Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. If you’ve spent any time on the Internet in general, and on social media sites specifically, you’ve seen just how badly the English language is being butchered today. I’m not sure what is being taught in the schools, but it sure ain’t grammar and proper punctuation! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. We live in an “autocorrect society” where too many of us have become dependent on devices to correct our mistakes for us. The problem lies in if you don’t know whether you’re hear, here, there, their, or they’re, autocorrect won’t help you. There is help out there, however, and I’m going to show you how you can proofread before you post!
If you’re a user of Microsoft Word, I’m sure you’ve encountered a red or green “squiggly” line under a word or phrase you’ve typed before. If you haven’t, you must have turned the spelling & grammar check off because nobody is perfect! If you haven’t noticed that before, when you misspell a word, a red line will appear under that word to alert you to a spelling mistake. If there’s a grammatical error in a phrase or sentence you’ve typed, a green line will be visible under that error. Most word processing programs behave the same – I just chose Word as an example. Now that you’re focused on these alerts, have you noticed these lines while typing something in your favorite web browser? If you’re typing an e-mail in Gmail using Google Chrome for instance, botched spelling will receive the same treatment as it will in Word with a red line under the offending word. Is your browser not showing you this? Perhaps spell check has been turned off. To enable it in Internet Explorer, click “Tools” then “Manage Add-ons”. Click “Spelling Correction” then make sure that the checkbox for “Enable spelling correction” is checked. English (United States) is the default language. Change it if it isn’t! In Google Chrome, click the three horizontal lines to the right of the address bar, then click “Settings”. Scroll down until you see “Show advanced setttings…” and click on it. Scroll down to the “Languages” section, and click “Language and input settings…” and make sure that the checkbox for “Use this language for spell checking” is checked. Finally, in Firefox, click the three horizontal lines to the right of the address bar, then click “Options”. Click the “Advanced” tab, then the “General” tab under that. Under the “Browsing” heading, make sure that the checkbox for “Check my spelling as I type” is checked.
If you’re about to send an important e-mail, checking for spelling might not be enough. That’s where SpellCheckPlus.com comes in. SpellCheckPlus.com is a free spelling and grammar checking site, though it has a 2000 character limit, so if you’re long-winded like I am, you might have to paste your e-mail in chunks to check the message in its entirety. The nice thing about this site is it will give you spelling and grammar suggestions, but also show the reasoning for the change, so you can learn along the way. The easiest way to use it is to do your typing wherever it will ultimately be going, whether in an e-mail, on Facebook, whatever. Then, (before clicking send, of course) highlight your text (hold the left mouse button and drag), right-click and choose “Copy” (CTRL-C for those of you who like keyboard shortcuts). Open a new tab, and go to SpellCheckPlus.com, then paste your text in the box by right-clicking and choosing “Paste” (or CTRL-V if you’d rather). Click “Check Text”, and your text will be evaluated. Red dashed lines indicate spelling errors, so simply hover your mouse (don’t click) over the error to see the proper suggested spelling over that word. Grammar mistakes are displayed as yellow blocks, so hover the mouse over the yellow box in question to see how it should be written. There is a summary of the mistakes and changes at the bottom of the screen, as well as a percentage that designates just how accurate you were with your spelling and grammar, along with a word count. The only downside to this service is that it doesn’t correct your mistakes, so remember to make the recommended changes yourself before clicking send!
Another site I use regularly is dictionary.com. As the domain name implies, it’s an online dictionary. The site also offers a thesaurus, suggestions for synonyms, as well as translations. Simply type the word in question in the box, and click the magnifying glass to the right. I’ve caught many spelling mistakes thanks to dictionary.com. Not everyone is a gifted wordsmith. Fortunately for us, there is help out there if we’re willing to look for it. If spelling or grammar isn’t your strong suit, you don’t have to let the world in on your secret. As I once read on a t-shirt, “Poor spellers untie!”