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I don't get it. Please explain to me why people don't use spell check. Do they think they're just such good spellers that they don't need any help? Maybe they also think that they're such good typists that they won't make any errors.

I have to admit that most people I know ARE better typists than I am and I would only consider myself an average speller, but I bet that I have fewer errors in my final documents and e-mails than they do. The reason for this is simply because I use spell check both in Word and in Outlook. I can make enough of a fool of myself in other ways; I don't need to add to it by also sending out e-mails with misspelled words on it. If there was a big effort involved in using spell check, I could better understand why people don't use it. But it is so easy (and painless) that I think everyone should use it. I guess if you're making a to do list for your own use or sending an e-mail to a friend, it's not that big of a deal if something is spelled wrong. But let's say you're sending an e-mail to your boss or worse yet, a potential boss who you are trying to get an interview with. How do you think your cover letter to this person will look with misspelled words? I'm sure that you'll be the first one they interview!

For those of you who know how to use spell check, you're dismissed. Just go use it. For those of you who don't know, the following steps should help you out.

Let's start out in Word. Go to the Tools menu and choose Options.

The following will appear and you should choose the Spelling & Grammar tab.

If you check “Check spelling as you type” and also “Check grammar as you type”, two things will happen. Whenever you misspell a word, it will get underlined in red. If you make a grammatical mistake, it will get underlined in green. You can see this in the screen shots below.

Note that if you right click on the misspelled word, you will be given options of words you might have meant to type. You can click on the correct word and it will then be changed in your document.

Right clicking on the grammatical error will also allow you to see if Word has any options for the corrections. Please note, be careful with the grammar check. I leave it turned on just because it is so easy to make little mistakes and the checker will bring those to your attention. But some of the things it tells you are just plain wrong.

I would venture to guess that people don't like these underlines and that's why they turn this option off. That's OK if they remember to do a spell check on it before it gets sent to their new potential boss or whomever, but most people won't remember. Those ugly little red and green lines force you to see your problem. If you think that you can remember to do a spell check on your documents and you really can't stand the red and green lines, then just do it manually. If you go back to the first screen shot that shows the Tools menu, you'll see that the first option on there is Spelling and Grammar. By choosing this, Word will “walk through” your document and point out anything that it determines is incorrect and you have the option to ignore it or correct it as shown in the shot below.

So much for Word, let's move on to Outlook Express. Go to the Tools menu and select Options.

You will get the following and you should choose the Spelling tab.

If you check the “Always check spelling before sending”, once you hit the Send button on your e-mail, it will perform a spell check before it is actually sent.

In my opinion, using this option is even more important than doing it in Word. If you type a document and print it out, there's a chance that you will reread it and catch your errors. With e-mail, once you hit send, it's gone. As much as most of us use e-mail for business purposes today, I think it is critical that we pay attention to what we're doing.

There's no replacement for carefully rereading everything you write, or better yet having a second set of eyes look it over, but why not also use these built in tools to help yourself?