What do Hemingway and Gates Have in Common?

Inbuilt spellcheckers and software-based editing are both wonderful and terrible at the same time. When they work well, they take away the stress of writing emails, reports, or even the odd text to a friend. Over the last few years, we’ve all come to rely on them and are often happy to follow blindly the dotted line beneath our words, which highlights our mistakes.

We rarely question the suggestions, but with a click of a button, accept the offered solution and move on without reading it back.?

Now you know as well as I, there’s an inbuilt problem: spellcheckers and editing software often have a mind of their own.?

How many times have you sent a text or an email only to re-read it and see gobbledegook staring back??

Autocorrect ARGHHHH!

Now don’t get me wrong, this software can be extremely useful for the everyday correction of your writing, but what if your document has important consequences?

Let’s consider for a moment this email from a manager to the security guard:

Deer Gorge?

We have a problem you knead to sort out. There are barking dads on the loose in the carpark.?

Yours sincerely Annex?

Annette Jones (Manager)

I have run this email through spellcheck on Google Docs where it showed no errors. Then through Word, Pages, ProWritingAid, Grammarly, and Hemingway with only the word ‘knead’ highlighted as being wrong.?

I know you can see the ridiculousness of the sentence and hope it brought a smile to your face, but can you also see how important it is not to rely on a machine to make sense of your sentences??

Only a human can do that.

There are many occasions where your writing needs to be perfect (or as near as is possible). Occasions such as applying for a job, submitting a term paper or a final thesis, sending a proposal to a client, or preparing a manuscript for publication.?

You get the idea. And when your reputation, career, or future success depends on the quality of your writing, you shouldn’t leave it to chance and the vagaries of a cyber-critic. Nothing compares with a human editor, who understands the nuances of language expression and can add value to your writing in ways a software program can’t.

• check clarity, continuity, and consistency,?
• add depth,?
• fact check,?
• recognise hidden meaning,
• re-word awkward expressions and transpose them into a cultural context,
• recognise emotional hooks and use them to the best advantage,

and,

• spot correctly spelled words used incorrectly.

Certainly, professional editing comes with a small fee, but the cost of not correcting your writing properly could be far more expensive in the long run.