When it comes to presenting a document to clients, professors or any audience, saying something smart and valuable matters. However, most people are likely to overlook your great content if it is riddled with typos, misspellings and mistakes. Producing flawless copy is a mark of professionalism; most companies expect nothing less in their documentation. One useful tool computer users can employ to edit their documents is a spell checker program or the spell checking functions offered by their word processor.
Identification
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Spell check functions or spell checkers are software applications that check words against a digital dictionary to ensure they are spelled correctly. Words that the spell checker identifies as misspelled are typically highlighted or underlined. Spell checkers can be independent programs installed on your computer, but more typically are a function available in virtually all word processing software programs. Some spell checkers also flag improper grammar usage in a document or offer suggestions on the proper spelling of the word you typed.
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Accuracy
One main benefit of using a spell checker is its accuracy. Running a spell checker ensures that the number of typos in your document decreases significantly. With the ease of typing on computers, people are typically able to write more text faster than they would by hand or on a typewriter. This means that even if you're a star speller, mistakes can still creep into your document. No matter what your spelling ability, running spell check on any digital document is essential to ensure accuracy and professionalism.
Saving Time
While it is always advisable to have a real person check over your document before it is sent to a client or professor, spell checkers do some of the grunt work, correcting typos with the same accuracy as a human counterpart. That leaves human editors free to work on the parts of your document that a spell checker cannot -- content clarity and proper writing technique.
Other Considerations
Spell checkers can also save you a significant amount of time by correcting all instances of a misspelled word at once. If you routinely spell a word wrong, you can use the spell checker to find the word in every place it crops up in your document and replace it with the correct spelling. Spell checker can also be used in this way to standardize your document. If you mention names or company titles frequently, you can use a spell checker's find-and-replace functions to ensure that each one is spelled the same, without going through the document by hand.