Your Spellchecker is Failing You

Spellchecker is supposed to be our spelling savior. Those red lines underneath our typings let us know that we are misspelling miscreants...and that we're an F7 from spelling salvation.

And then there are words that are spelled correctly, but are not the words you're looking for.

SIX WORDS THAT SNEAK PAST SPELLCHECKER

A) Manager
I've seen too many emails referring me to someone's "manger." Manger is a real word (used in a partial sentence: "away in a manger") so spellchecker won't look at it twice. Beware!

2) Ensure
Not the meal replacement drinks marketed towards the elderly, but the word that means to make sure something happens. Peeps not in the know often spell it as "insure," which only ever refers to insurance.

C) Led
Used in a sentence: "Kelly led the meeting yesterday because Ned fell asleep again." "Led" is past tense. "Lead" (pronounced the same, not like "leed") is used only in present tense. English is dumb.

4) Judgment
You may be wondering where the other "e" is. Unless you're British, you're wrong. 'Mericans spell it j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t. In The Land of Pip Pip (England), it's spelled j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t.

E) Identify
How do you butcher this one? By typing, "identity," instead.

6) Affect/Effect
This one drives me nuts. "Affect" is a verb. Used in a sentence: "When Ned is cranky it negatively affects Kelly's day."

"Effect" is a noun. Used in a sentence: "Ned's cranky and it had a negative effect on Kelly's day."