It doesn't matter if you are a graphic designer, writer, webmaster, ezine publisher, or whatever. The point is you spend a lot of time typing. As a professional your biggest enemy is the typo.



Typos as a mistake are not hard, even for professionals, to overlook. The sad part is that even though you are a professional a simple typo can sometimes appear as a crime to your reader. Spell checking your documents is one of the most important tasks you must sue before completing any project. A misspelled word interrupts the flow of your writing and disturbs the concentration of your reader. Worst of all it can present you as an amateur.

Most word processing and html softwares come with spell checkers to help prevent these errors. Spell checking is not enough. A spell checking function, although helpful, does not catch all typos.

Typos that are overlooked by spell checkers are misused words.

Words such as:

too and to

accept and except

there and their

were and we're

right and write

reign and rain

You get the idea.

Another common mistake that is easily overlooked is a missing word.

Sometimes these mistakes are not easily noticeable but reader knows that something does not quite read right.

Did you catch the missing word in the above sentence? It should have been this:

Sometimes these mistakes are not easily noticeable but the reader knows that something does not quite read right.

One other mistake is the missing letter. If one is typed as on, it will not be picked up by a spell checker.

The best way to avoid these mistakes is to never finish anything in one sitting. It is easy to become attached to our work. That is to say that as we stare at our computers it is no longer that easy for us to see mistakes that would be easily recognizable by anyone else. We become close to our work. A good rule of thumb is to finish your typing, spell check, and re- read your work the next day. This allows us to view our work with a fresh eye. We can then catch mistakes we might not have noticed. Another idea is to let someone we trust proofread our work for us.

I am by no means an English expert. I am however exceptional in creating typographical errors that I do not notice until later.

While all of this information may seem common knowledge, I wrote this article for myself as much as for you. I am extremely guilty of typing mistakes and should probably be punished. I have noticed lately in my recent work that my title as typographical royalty is unchallenged.

The Queen fo the Typpos rains suporeme! *grin*