SpellCheck...or not?

SpellCheck is a wonderful thing.  It picks up a lot of errors; spacing, incorrect letters, non-existing words.  What is DOESN’T pick up are real words used incorrectly.  Consider the sentence ‘’He blue out the candles.’’  SpellCheck would sail right over this without detecting that the sentence should contain the word ‘’blew.’’  Similarly, ‘’I’m going two the store’’ would also not get flagged by SpellCheck as incorrect.  Sew don’t get lulled into a false sense of security (J).  Proof your work closely AFTER you’ve run SpellCheck as a first edit.

Trendy Expressions May Not Be "Cool"

People use slang or jargon to those they don’t know really well and don’t realize that everyone is not up on the latest hip way of speaking.   A business contact of mine, when taking responsibility for a mistake, used the term ‘’my bad.’’   The Languagelady is a grammar nut, so my first reaction was to think ‘’my bad what?”  I wondered if the person hadn’t finished her sentence?  What wasn’t I understanding?  So, before you use some trendy, hot expression to show that you are cool and up-to-date, consider your audience and the reaction that it might have.  Instead of cool, you might convey quite the opposite impression.  And of course, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!