We spelled “Hopkinton” wrong the other day. Luckily it wasn’t that many shirts.  Hopkinton is a very small town, which is primarily known for being the starting place of the Boston Marathon. Our artist put a “G” in there making it Hopkington, which looks correct unless you know otherwise. I just noticed that the autospell function of WordPress just tried to get me to change it to Hopkinson.

I counted at least 8 other people in our system that saw it and didn’t catch it, including the customer. You just have to know how to spell it, no spellcheck program will catch it.

Proofread your work by looking at the words in reverse order, and by always asking somebody else to look at it, as fresh eyes often help.  It also sometimes can help to have your personal list by your side of what you often get wrong, like in my case I am always bollixing up their/there and It’s/its.

Spellcheck is a useful tool as well, but it has limitations, as this poem indicates:

“Ode to My Spell Checker.”

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect awl the way.
My checker told me sew.