Tag Archives: spelling

Monday in the HTMLab

Spellcheck Your Graphics!

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It never fails: I come across a website with really beautiful site graphics (like a site header), only to see that the site name or description is misspelled on the graphic. (Either that, or I catch an error in my own graphics. LOL) A couple of examples, below:

amazingnatuer
visitmywebstie

Errors like these pop up all the time across the Internet, usually because we get caught up in the throes of website creation, or we’re in a hurry. Thus, letter reversals (like the above) and other misspellings can slip through the cracks and end up posted for everyone to see.

This IS a Problem!

The Internet these days is chock-full of such errors. But, unfortunately, misspellings (especially in site graphics) make your site look unprofessional, and therefore less likely to be trustworthy. It’s not just English majors and English teachers who have a problem with misspellings, either; many users will be turned off by such errors, because it makes one’s whole site look amateurish or ill-made.

Thus, it’s worth taking a little extra time to spellcheck first–after all, we don’t want to turn visitors away from our sites because of a few little errors!

How to Spellcheck Graphics (Don’t Worry, It’s Easy)

Most image editing programs do not have a spellcheck function built in, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Don’t worry, though, it’s not a hard process!

  1. Before you save your image, read the text on it aloud–this alone will help you catch 90% of your errors, because you’re taking the time to look at each word while you read it.
  2. If you are unsure of a word’s spelling, search for it using a search engine, or look it up through Dictionary.com.

Just these two simple steps can remove most errors–it just takes a little more effort. Additionally, if you don’t trust your own spelling, have a friend or colleague who is good with spelling check your image before you publish it. A second pair of eyes always helps!

Spelling’s Not the Only Thing that Counts

Next week, I’ll demonstrate another important language point in web design–grammar! (It’s not just for school anymore–it’s for communicating your ideas correctly!)

Tuesday on the Soapbox

I-N-C-O-N-V-E-N-I-E-N-C-E

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I spelled this word out in my blog title because I have seen it misspelled so often it makes me laugh. “Inconvieniece,” “incoinvenice,” and even “enconvance”…and no, sadly, I’m not kidding. As a former English teacher, these spelling mistakes (on the outsides of otherwise professional businesses, mind you!) grate on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard. It’s an inconvenience to have to decode these handwritten signs! 😛

C-H-I-L-D-H-O-O-D, “childhood”

I’ve generally been an instinctive good speller, all through my life–writing words correctly came more naturally to me, possibly because of all the reading I did, and possibly because my parents used a large vocabulary around me at young ages. Unlike math, which remains a frightening overgrown jungle, spelling was laughably easy, at least on paper. I could clearly see the word in front of me, and if it was spelled wrong, it LOOKED wrong on the page–it looked ugly, ill-formed, and I eagerly sought to change it with my trusty eraser.

(Side note: Spelling out loud is quite another animal entirely from spelling in writing; the ephemeral nature of the spoken voice meant that I could not “see” what I was spelling and could not “see” where to pick up from if I paused in the middle of a word. Once I paused, it was like I was going to have to start back over if I was to complete the word successfully. Thus, the embarrassment of spelling “tied” as “tide” in the first grade spelling bee. Even though I KNEW as it came out of my mouth it was wrong, wrong, wrong, I couldn’t keep my traitorous tongue from spitting out the wrong sequence of letters because I had stopped in the middle of the word. GRR. Even 19 years later, GRR.)

But even people like me are not immune to misspelling words in print. Just now, I typed “misppelling” instead of “misspelling” and had to go back. Why? Because my little finger got trigger-happy on the P key. Keyboards make it a lot faster and easier to communicate, but you have to be a precision instrument in order to spell correctly 100% of the time. Let’s just say I’m very good at hitting the Backspace key at lightning speed to correct myself. Just like “tied” and “tide” (darnit, I did it again–I reversed the words!), I can feel when I’m spelling a word wrong or if I’ve hit a key too many times, unless I’m too wrapped up in WHAT I’m writing about to be bothered with it.

Can You Spell “I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T?” Oh, It’s Spelled Three Different Ways?

Difficulties with spelling are everywhere, due to many factors, such as the Internet, chatspeak and textspeak, lower emphasis on reading for pleasure in our society, and even less emphasis on spelling in schools. I actually had a parent come into my classroom one day asking me why her daughter’s spelling tests were pulling her grades down–“why does it matter so much?” she asked. I almost choked on my response trying not to laugh in her face. Of COURSE spelling matters; how am I going to know what your daughter’s turning in for assignments if I have no idea what language she’s writing in?

Some spelling mistakes even change the entire meaning of the word. Misspelling “from” as “form” is rather innocuous, but if you’re in a hurry and rearrange the letters of “this” into a popular four-letter curse, you’ll likely be in trouble with your boss. I know we’re all rushing around these days, but if we can’t even be bothered to make sure we’re communicating correctly, why even bother communicating at all?

What got to me the worst during teaching was that most of the spelling mistakes my students made could have been caught (and were indeed caught) when they read their papers through a second time. I took to having my students read their papers aloud before they turned them in, just to let them share their ideas with the class if they wanted to…and if I had a dollar for every time I heard them stop reading, pick up their pencil, and madly erase and rewrite, I wouldn’t be bothering looking for a job right now. XD I probably saved students a good bit of points off their papers for spelling mistakes by doing that, and I also saved myself a few headaches correcting them. It proves that they knew the correct spelling, but were hurrying through the paper and didn’t check it beforehand.

Making Our Communication Better

Adults can benefit from even just a scanning read-through of their communications, too. The number of emails I’ve gotten with “thier” in place of “their,” “your” in place of “you’re”, and “freind” instead of “friend” are amazing, and Internet websites (even the more reputable ones) are getting worse about those kinds of mistakes, too. Spellcheck won’t catch everything, either–it might catch “freind” and “thier,” but it won’t bother with “your” and “you’re.”

How can we get back to communicating clearly? This is, after all, a big problem–if we’re communicating with people who speak another language, feeding misspelled words into a translator will spit out garbage. Heck, some other native speakers might have a problem with reading what you’ve written, if it’s got enough mistakes in it. Below are some tips for spelling even in today’s Internet-driven world:

Steps to Spelling Better

  1. If in doubt, look up the word on Dictionary.com. Better to search and be sure of the spelling than unsure and wrong, especially if you’re writing to a boss or other authority figure.
  2. Sound the word out. To go back to the word “inconvenience” for a moment: the word is pronounced “ihn-kahn-VEE-nee-ence” (or “ihn-kahn-VEEN-yince” if you’re in the South like me). If it was spelled “inconvieniece,” it would be pronounced “ihn-KAHN-vee-neese.” Sound out what you have spelled and see if it reads the same way–if it doesn’t, you likely have a misspelling on your hands.
  3. Practice using the word you have trouble spelling as often as you can in emails, text messages, and written communication. It might be awkward at first, but if you get used to how it feels to type and write the word, you’ll misspell it less often. (This really, really works–I had to use this trick with the word “socioeconomic” because I kept trying to put in a few too many “o’s.”)
  4. Before you send anything out, read it aloud. Just like it worked for my middle-schoolers, it works for me–I catch all kinds of errors when I read my work out loud, like poor wording and too-long sentences. Spelling mistakes often jump out just as easily, and you can then take the time to look up any words which you’re not sure are spelled right.

Summary

If we don’t learn how to spell and practice the art of it, our writing will be dismissed, possibly even laughed at, and we might not be taken as seriously in the workplace. Our writing is how we communicate with others, and if it’s done poorly, we wno’t be udnrestode by enyun at ale. (See how bungled “won’t be understood by anyone at all” can become? …Ugh, that deliberate misspelling was painful to type. Yuck. :P)

But that is why spelling is important, and that’s what I told the mother of one of my students: “If you want your daughter to be able to write clearly when she graduates, you’ll work with her on her spelling. Otherwise, she’ll look unprofessional and uneducated her entire life, no matter how good her credentials are.” We have to keep that in mind for ourselves and our children. We wouldn’t walk into an interview or a fancy restaurant in wrinkled stained clothes; neither should we submit a resume (or an email) full of errors.