Pebblepup's Writing Den

I have a fond memory of working at a department store. Someone printed a sign off the computer and taped it to the door leading to the stock room. It said “Authorized Personal only.” It always made me chuckle because I love typos — especially when they aren’t mine. They meant Personnel. Spell check only tells you if you’ve spelled the word correctly, not if it is the correct word.

Using spell check is good. You can cut out a lot of typos that way, but not if you have the wrong word. Take a piece of your writing and look at it, word by word. Are they all spelled right? If so, good. If not fix it.

Now for the harder question. Are they all the words you mean? Words can be tricky. Think about the sign on the stock room door. Personal means something completely different from Personnel. Do the words you’ve used mean what you think they do?

You don’t want to inspire chuckling in your reader at the wrong moment. Laughter in the wrong place can detract from your writing. Worse, the wrong word can pop your reader out of the story you spent so much time crafting. This is not what you want. You want them to stay immersed until they reach the end of the story. This is what you need to strive for.

The wrong word isn’t a problem in the rough draft. You find them and change them for the right words during the revision process. That’s why you need to read the words aloud. Or you could ask someone else read the piece before you call it ready for publication.

Two of the most important tools in your writer’s tool box are the dictionary and thesaurus. The former gives you the definitions of the word so you can be certain you are not only using the right word. The latter gives you alternative words that mean the same thing as a word you might not want to use..

The thesaurus doesn’t tell you if the word has a negative connotation to most people. So use it with caution. The dictionary will also tell you if you have spelled the word right. We’ve all heard jokes about auto correct. I once worked for a company who had a name that auto correct always changed to jail. While I always laughed at it, I had to change it. You need to look for these kinds of problems as well.

If you come back to the work later, you might not realize it has the wrong word. I didn’t work for a jail. so that was easy to correct. There are other words that might not be as obvious. The only become obvious when you read the work aloud or have someone else read it and find errors.

When choosing your words in writing your piece, you need to be careful that you get the right word. Make sure it’s spelled correctly and that you have used it correctly. That will make your writing stronger and better. Keep writing and good luck.