A spellchecker will tell you if you have spelled ‘separate’ wrongly. It won’t notice you’ve put ‘form’ instead of ‘from’. And it won’t pick up the kind of errors that a well-informed proof-reader will spot.
The following phrases contain different kinds of errors:
- HMS Hood could travel at 32 knots faster than any other ship.
- It was not until they were passing the Gare de l’Quest that Sandoz suddenly had an idea.
- 25g plain flour
- always the same handsome, rugged faces, wrapped in great swathes of turban, rising from a grey charwal chemise
Some of these would not be picked up by a spell-checker or even a fairly sharp proof-reader looking for basic errors. If the spell-checker did spot them, it would not always be clear what was wrong, or what to do about it. Sometimes it is the context which makes it wrong. Sometimes the error is only apparent with some background knowledge of the subject being written about.
You can’t always find a proof-reader who is a specialist in the same area you are writing about. I will not pretend I am an expert in engine specifications or European law. But some of the mistakes I noticed in the examples above were by comparing the text with what it refers to – does what I am reading make consistent sense in the way it is meant to? If it doesn’t, then the museum visitor, the GCSE student or the cook who was reading the text will get the wrong information. And it is my job to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Accuracy Works 