How Much Should You Trust Your Word Processor?

Hi,

Issue # 009, 15th July, 2009

In This Issue:

1. Free Ebooks!!!
2. How Much Should You Trust Your Word Processor?
3. Spread the Word

Free Ebooks!!!

Something great is in the offing! Next month, you will receive two free ebooks just because you are subscribed to Writer Digest. Tell your friends all about it. I am not going to do something this crazy again!

How Much Should You Trust Your Word Processor?

After I completed the first draft of my manuscript, I took it to my former English teacher to take a long look at it.

When he noticed that I had printed it out, he said:

“You used the computer to type, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then obviously, there are very few mistakes.” He said with an air of confidence.

I nearly laughed at his conclusion, but being the good boy I am, I decided to agree quite respectfully.

“But wasn’t he right?” you are probably thinking. “Doesn’t the computer automatically correct errors?”

Well, the answer is: your word processor corrects certain errors, but not all of them. In fact, a lot of errors will go unnoticed.

Firstly, you need to understand how your word processor works.

Most of us tend to think the computer is really smart and corrects errors. Well, it is not. In fact, the computer does not even know what it is doing. A word processor is a piece of software designed by a person.

Now, what the programmer did was to take note of the errors that we frequently make and then program the computer to automatically recognize them and where appropriate, make needed corrections.

Your word processor usually recognizes the following errors:

1. spelling mistakes
2. grammatical and syntax errors
3. Spacing errors
4. Punctuation

In most cases, your word processor will alert you to these errors and wait on you to correct them. If you use word, grammatical, syntax, spacing, and punctuation errors are underlined green, whereas spelling mistakes are underlined red.

In some cases, it will automatically correct them. You can actually set it up to automatically correct certain errors that you are prone to making. For instance, I usually misspell the word time, spelling it as tiem. So I can set up the program to automatically correct my error, so that each time I type the word tiem, it can reset it to time.

A computer usually recognizes spelling errors by comparing word with what it already has in its database. When a word is not recognized, it is assumed to be a spelling error (You can add words not recognized to the dictionary).

So now that you know what your computer actually does, how far are you willing to trust it? Indeed, can the computer correct all your errors? A number of people tend to think that way. All they do after typing is run the spelling and grammar check and bingo! They think they are done.

But hold on.

The truth is your word processor will not recognize all your errors. The reason for this is that it is not a human who can recognize certain errors because he is aware of how you think. In fact, a computer does not think.

Here are some errors your word processor will never recognize:

1. Omissions: if you leave out a word from a sentence, your computer will not always know that and won’t alert you to the error. In fact, it can never know what you intended to write.

2. Homophone Errors: if you misuse a word for the sole reason that it sounds like another, your computer may not recognize that. For example, if you meant to use flutter, but you use flatter, your computer will not recognize it because the word is still spelt correctly. However, if you are lucky, it will register a syntax error.

3. Logical errors: sometimes, you may make logical errors, whereby your sentences appear grammatically correct but do not make much sense. To your computer, it may sound correct, but to your human readers it will not make sense.

4. Wrong Words: your words may be correctly spelt, but they may be wrong altogether. For example, in the sentence, The man and her wife are dead, the pronoun her is the wrong word to use, but your computer won’t know that.

Of course, there are a number of errors that your word processor will never recognize. So it is still important to proof read your work, or have another human being do that.

The lesson is, don’t always trust machines with your work. They will help you a great deal, but for the bulk of it, you are on your own.

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