About a year ago, I wrote a blog emphasizing the importance of carefully proofreading everything we draft and used a humorous personal Facebook post as an example.

But, some things never change, and the need to carefully proof EVERYTHING we do at our Cincinnati marketing and communications firm, is one of those things. So, I felt now was a good time for a reminder.

As I’ve said before, spell check should always be ON but…it still doesn’t catch everything. Consider homophones, those pesky words that sound exactly the same as others, but are spelled differently (and have different meanings). Examples:

Which vs. witch

Whether vs. weather

Effect vs. affect

Their vs. they’re vs. there
Or, consider words that are spelled exactly the same but mean different things:
Lead vs. lead

Bass vs. bass

Wind vs. wind

Finally, the Associated Press’ decision to now allow “over” to be used in the same context as “more than” and “under” used as “less than” is reprehensible to me and I WILL NOT DO IT. You can’t make me. But it just goes to show how the (American) English language continues to grow and change and adapt as time passes. I mean, the fact that the words “selfie” and “ginormous” have made it into the dictionary is proof positive that, despite the fact that some things should never change (proof, people!) the times…they are a’changin’…