Yesterday I had to get some spelling advice from my sister. I’d already spent an hour trying to find the answer on the internet, but everything I read just made me more confused, so I gave up and emailed my sister (ex-teacher and librarian), and she replied quick-smart with a definitive answer. Yay for sisters.
I still miss being the go-to grammar and spelling person at work, but to be honest I didn’t always know the answers and often had to look things up on the internet or in one of my trusty books, my favourite being Writing at Work by Neil James, Executive Director of the Plain English Foundation. If you are ever going to buy a writing book, I recommend this one.
Like most people, I have several words which I commonly misspell. (It amuses me that misspelt is a word that nearly everyone misspells). I spent many years with a yellow sticky note stuck on my monitor with “separate” written on it because I had a mental blank about how to spell it, despite having my spellchecker turned on. Other people tell me they struggle with broccoli, cemetery and when to use stationery/stationary, although that one is easy to remember. A pen is stationery, and we spell both with an e.
Today I read an article where the writer had used pneumonic instead of mnemonic, and it made me laugh. She can blame spellcheck, I guess.
Writing is hard, and everyone makes mistakes, including me.
I recently started using a tool called ProWritingAid, an online editing tool. It’s not as good as a real editor, (by which I mean a person), but pretty useful. I have the free version which allows you to upload a small quantity of text and it will check it for grammar, spelling and style errors. I also use their Chrome add-on which highlights mistakes when I’m doing any online writing, for example commenting on other people’s blogs. It makes helpful suggestions which you can easily ignore if you don’t like them or don’t agree.
It’s interesting to observe the mistakes I commonly make and try to correct them. Most of them are poor writing habits such as using passive voice and unnecessary words. Best of all, you get a brief report at the end of the week telling you how many improvements you’ve made.
I have learnt that my main issue is using modifiers that weaken my writing.
Examples are “just”, as in I just wanted to say; “somewhat”, as in I was somewhat discouraged; and “a bit” as in I was a bit sad. We commonly use these words in academic writing, which encourages tentative language. Sentences often start with the words, “the research shows”, or “it would seem that…” You can’t be too confident just in case you can’t back up your claim with evidence.
But I’m not writing academic essays anymore, so I’ve started removing these words. As a result, I think my writing is much stronger and clearer. And as you know, I’m a big fan of clarity and brevity.
Why don’t you try it and see what you think?
Margaret Moon 
I love buying writing books so thanks for the tip. I have just bought Write To The Point by Sam Leith which looks good.
Talking of mistakes, the family made the mistake of watching some of Married At First Sight: Australia but the two bonus outcomes were someone describing himself as a “vivacious” reader, and another saying that she would draw a “diaphragm” to explain something.
Oh dear. Funny but sad. You are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with that show.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I’ll look it up.
🙂 A lot of professional authors use ProWritingAid.
I use Grammarly; it is great at detecting misspelt words and correcting grammar issues.
Do enjoy the rest of your day, Margaret!
I heard Joanna Penn mention it on her podcast. She said that when she’s in a hurry she runs her entire manuscript through prowriter. I am finding it useful but grammarly is good too. Have a nice day yourself Renard!