In Plain English

Spell Checkers, Proofreading
and the Lack of Free Lunches

By Mary Barnard Ray

No, Virginia, there is no free lunch. Spell checkers do not do your proofreading for you. Not even grammar checkers can do the whole job. You still have to sit down and read what you have written before you ask the reader to do so.

Spell checkers do, however, change the nature of the proofreading task. In some ways, they make proofreading more difficult. The spell checker removes the frequent errors, like "teh," "dificult" or "defendent." So as you proofread, your eye glides across rows of error-free text. This near-absence of error and the familiarity of the text invite you to read faster. The result is that you glide right over the few mistakes that remain. Thus, for example, you may not catch the error of writing: "Instead, you may now include the amount..." when you meant "Instead, you may not include the amount... ."

Such errors can be costly and embarrassing. For example, "The Plaintiff has failed to establish that any unfair pricing practices were used by this pubic utility."

It will be a while before spell checkers develop the human's sense of meaning and context. In the meantime, proofread.

The remaining question is how to proofread efficiently. The best solution is probably to get someone else to do it, someone who has not read the piece of writing before. Try to arrange a trade with one of your trusted coworkers: each of you can proofread each other's writing before it leaves the office. You will both save yourself public embarrassment, and occasionally, have a good laugh.

If you must proofread your own writing, do not try to proofread immediately after writing the document. Instead, set it aside and do something else first. Make a phone call, have lunch or read a humorous column in the paper. To proofread effectively, you need to move to a different state of mind and away from your familiarity with the document's content. If you produce several documents in a day, you may be able to proofread all your documents at the end of the day, if by then you are in a cynical mood or are looking for a good joke. Alternatively, you may proofread them all the next morning, when you are fresh but not yet ready to tackle new writing projects.

You may find a specific proofreading technique that helps you. Various writing aids suggest ways to proofread: reading backwards, reading aloud or making several passes looking for different kinds of errors in each pass. Each of these techniques helps some writers, but is no help at all to others. Do not worry if your proofreading technique is different from your coworkers, from the advice you read or from what you were taught in school. Do worry, however, if you are not proofreading at all.

When it comes to proofreading, there is only one rule: Just do it.

Mary Barnard Ray is a legal writing lecturer and director of the Legal Writing Individualized Instruction Services at the U.W. Law School. She has taught writing workshops and offered individual sessions for law students; she also taught advanced writing and commenting and conferencing techniques in the training course for legal writing teaching assistants. She has taught and spoken nationally at many seminars and conferences of legal and college writing instructors. Her publications include two coauthored legal writing books, Getting It Right and Getting It Written and Beyond the Basics, published by West Publishing Co.

If you have a writing problem that you can't resolve, send your question to Ms. Ray, c/o Wisconsin Lawyer, State Bar of Wisconsin, P.O. Box 7158, Madison, WI 53707-7158. Or, email your question. Your question and Ms. Ray's response will be published in this column.

Please Comment on the Current Use of "Parameters"

Q: Shouldn't "parameters" often be replaced by "perimeters" or "limits" or "boundaries"? To me, a parameter is a variable term or factor.

A: Most nonmathematical writers use "parameter" imprecisely, using it to suggest a variety of meanings. As a result, readers can't be sure what the word means much of the time. To avoid leaving a reader with this confusion, replace "parameter" with a word that is more precisely understood. For example, try "perimeter" (the outer edge), "scope" (the range of possibilities) or "boundary" (the limit of possibilities).

"Parameter" does have several precise technical meanings. In mathematics, it is a constant in an equation, but a constant that can have different numerical values. The value of that constant, in turn, determines the equation's outcome. In statistics, "parameter" also means a statistical measure of a total population.

Used metaphorically, "parameter" can mean an attribute that predicts or defines the nature of the whole. This is a useful concept and might be a writer's exact meaning. Too bad a reader can't be sure of it.