Create a Personal Problem List

You might remember my advice to create your own style sheet.

I now have a new tip to add. My friends and I were talking about the words we can never remember how to spell no matter how many times we try. (For me, aptly, the word is "embarrass." And yes I misspelled it the first time I typed it here, leaving that gosh darn second "r" off as always, and had to fix it.)

Create a personal "problem words" list for your use, made up of the words you consistently misspell, misuse, or confuse. Keep this list handy and do a targeted search for each problem word during your editing passes.

This isn't just about spelling, of course. Other common grammatical culprits include: its/it's, affect/effect, who's/whose, then/than, and desert/dessert.)

Whatever your personal writing demons, add them. Maybe you always type "form" when you mean "from," or you can never remember whether it's "compliment" or "complement." Maybe your keyboard autocorrects "is" to "Oscar" 80% of the time. (Just me?)

Use your word processor's Find function to hunt down every instance of these problem words. This focused approach catches errors that spell check misses (because the wrong word is correctly spelled) and trains your brain to be more careful with these troublesome pairs.

Maybe, over time, we'll internalize the correct versions. I'll get back to you on my experience!

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