Spell Check Is Not a Proofreader

Here's a quick way to ensure your resume or cover letter is tossed aside by hiring managers:

Tell them you have years of experience in pubic relations.

As someone who writes extensively about public golf courses, it’s an ongoing battle for me to be sure that little l is firmly entrenched where it needs to be to avoid an embarrassing misprint. It'll slip by a spell check, but not a qualified proofreader.

The proofreader's job is to pick up not just the obvious mistakes that might have eluded the writer and editor(s), but the sneaky ones, too. There's a big, expensive difference between finding a study and funding one – the proofreader snaps to attention; the spell check simply shrugs.

And if you read the first line above and felt compelled to replace the e in ensure with an i, you’re not alone. The word insure, however, refers to insurance, as in paying for coverage that will reimburse you in the event a resume or cover letter is discarded by a hiring manager. Both words are correctly spelled.

A quick Google search will also turn up a variety of comical errors caused by missing or misplaced punctuation. Here's an example, from one of my wife’s favorite T-shirts, of a call to dinner gone wrong:

Let's eat, kids!

Let's eat kids!

These errors are minor in terms of ink on a page (or characters on a screen) but carry major weight in sinking a job search or marring a published article. You cannot count on a spell check’s grammar function to pick up similar omissions.

Proofreaders are trained to find and eliminate these types of mistakes. If you are writing for publication, as a business professional or to advance your career, do not overlook the importance of having someone on hand to edit your work.