a tip for people who write on their computer - Writers Forum

bheid1.01 · 11-09-2005, 11:55 AM

when you're writing on word, do you often stop and correct a mistake? i do.

use wordpad, its on the accesssories tab on the startmenu, it dosent highlight mistakes like word and so you have no reason to stop.

since i started using it i've doubled my output.

gohn67 · 11-09-2005, 04:31 PM

You can also turn off Grammar Check and Spell check on Word. That's what I do. Those green and red lines, especially the greens one's all over the page piss me off. I leave spell check on though.

suzakugaiden · 11-09-2005, 07:11 PM

Yes, and then half of your story is misspelled and ungrammatical.

Anarkos · 11-09-2005, 07:52 PM

Yeah, ideally, you pretty much shouldn't be seeing them anyway. You can customise the dictionary so the spellcheck fits the language as you see it, and selectively turn on and off the grammar check's features. Pretty much whenever's there's a red or green line in a well-written tale with a well setup installation of Word, the author should know just why it's there...

Kyle Bagley · 11-09-2005, 08:03 PM

I use Word. I never stop while writing though, I just run spell check at the end.

Hodge · 11-09-2005, 09:44 PM

I correct typos as I see them and if I'm unsure how to spell a word I look it up. Then I run spell check to find any other typos I missed. Unfortunately, my spell checker sucks, as it counts words joined together with an em-dash as one big, misspelled word.

domodoom · 11-10-2005, 01:03 AM

Does word pad have spelling check?

valeca · 11-10-2005, 01:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by domodoom

Does word pad have spelling check?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

domodoom · 11-10-2005, 01:47 AM

Wow then im sticking with word then.

Black Phoenix · 11-10-2005, 03:02 AM

Actually, most writing professors I've had have said not to rely on spellcheckers for everything, but by the same token, not to ignore them either. They're a great help, and besides, fixing a spelling or grammar error shouldn't take that long, I don't understand why you can't just fix the word and move on. If you don't like the red underline every time you make a mistake, there is a way to turn that off in most programs, then you can just run a check manually when your ready.

Believe me, thirteen some odd comics twenty pages at least each, and a three hundred page novel (that's just the tip of the ice burg really, since I've been doing this stuff since twelve) teach you the value of spell check, its pretty easy to miss a lot of those errors once you really start writing a lot. I'm kinda lazy, so when I correcty my work, mostly I'm looking for concept flaws, plot holes, unnecessary details and research flaws. I let Bill Gate's creation "microsoft word" do most of the work in finding my grammar and spelling errors, because afer hors or had wook, ya don wan someting lak illegibility to get in the way of your stories.

Anarkos · 11-10-2005, 04:48 AM

Fixing spelling, yes. Fixing grammar?

Get some Strunk up you. Word doesn't do that at all well.

It has to be a balance.

The same goes for spell check. For example, perusing your site, I found, in the first paragraph of the right story, mention of "rouge militaries". Now, I'm pretty sure you didn't mean militaries who used a lot of makeup to add colour to their cheeks...

Nickie · 11-10-2005, 07:25 AM

I also use Word. I almost never see a red line (and when it occurs, it's because I use the American spelling, while my pc is on British English) and never, ever see a green line!

But then I do have a Master's in linguistics (Dutch & English). Would be bad if I made a lot of mistakes...

Nickie

Hand · 11-10-2005, 08:27 AM

I ignore the green lines, and I don't make spelling errors.

Avarice · 11-10-2005, 09:30 AM

i use jarte, its a free thing you download from the net, its like wordpad, no red lines but it has spellcheck and all that, i abhor microsoft word, it makes your work as interesting as a tax return.

tanmay · 11-10-2005, 10:48 AM

I prefer to correct the mistake right away rather than waiting till the end, so MS WORD works fine for me.