Spring vacations are just about finished for 2014, so now it’s time to think about staying challenged and strong for the last few months of school.
One aspect of completing a school year is to pay special attention to writing and editing while completing assignments and projects. And an important part of editing is searching for misspelled words using two steps.
In spell-check, step one, a computer program or website, runs through a person’s prose, identifies the misspelled words, and offers the writer options for correcting, changing or leaving a word alone. These days many programs and sites spell check as a person writes, but that is no excuse for not going through the editing process.
The second, more challenging step — and perhaps the bigger responsibility — requires a writer to follow-up the spell checker, searching for errors that the automated process may have missed. Many of the remaining errors are not technically mistakes. Instead they are correctly spelled words that the writer typed by accident (or with the help of auto-word completion) or misused homonyms — accurately spelled but used incorrectly. So the spell checker missed these words.
A good writer, no matter what age, must always spell check the spell checker and will probably cycle through the process several times.
The two poems below will amuse young writers as well as help them think about the mechanics of spelling.
Human Brain Not Yet Obsolete
I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC:
It plainly marked four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I’ve run this poem threw it,
I’m sure your pleased too no,
Its letter-perfect in it’s weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
— Author Unknown
A second poem:
Media! Tech! Parenting! 