No time for proofreading? That's a problem

Does spelling still matter?

A teacher friend of mine told me about a new software program being used in the younger grades in her school. It's used to help with reading and writing, and provides a spell checker and word prediction. Instead of marvelling at this innovative technology, she actually lamented. She feared that instead of teaching the students to spell, it would just do the job for them. (And for those of us who have predictive text on our cell phones, we know this is a scary thing.) For years now, educators and their government counterparts have been promoting literacy with programs such as DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) and Family Literacy. But why learn how to spell when, truthfully, computers can do it for us, quicker and better?I fear that many adults have also taken this carefree attitude towards spelling to heart. Lately I have encountered more and more typos in online work such as websites, blogs and emails. It seems to me that people are much more careful about proofreading printed material than they are about online posts. Maybe that’s because they know that online material can be corrected at any time, even after it’s published, whereas print errors last forever.

Whenever I used to encounter an error online, I would email the offending organization. (Does this make me sound persnickety? Really, I thought I was doing the organization a favour.) However, while I sent out myriad emails, not once did I ever see the site corrected. The last straw happened just a few weeks ago.  My son and I were perusing the listing guide for high school courses, and we couldn't help but notice at least five errors in just three listings. Now this was on the website of a school board (and not a small board) of all things. I couldn’t help myself and used the contact form on the site to let the board know about the errors. No response. I then sent an email to our school trustee who passed it along. A few days later, I received an email thanking me for pointing out the errors, but stating that the board does not have the funding for editors, and asking me to point out the errors so they could be corrected. Really? There's no money to pay a few freelance editors to ensure that there are no spelling errors in a document that is read by thousands of high school students?

Is spelling so insignificant nowadays that we no longer care if things are correct? Yesterday I was reading an online PDF of a document from a premier not-for-profit institution. Even at first glance, I noticed typos, inconsistencies and grammatical errors. Now you think I’d learn my lesson, but I couldn’t help myself and quickly sent off an email to two staff members of the offending organization, pointing out several of the errors. Do they care? I’m really not sure, but the PDF remains as is.

It may be a little thing, but I think it says a lot about an organization that doesn’t care about putting its best face forward. After all, proofreaders abound. You could pay your creative company to proofread, hire a freelancer or ask for a volunteer. A few hours spent before you post or print anything will ensure that your target audience is taking in what it’s reading rather than snickering that you accidentally typed in “impotent” when you meant “important.”

_{Header image by John Boyer, SXC. Body image illustration by Moi Cody from SXC. Text added by Nyman Ink.}