Sometimes a spell check is not enough

I am an editor. I read a lot. And I often find mistakes in the things I read, from books to newspaper articles to cereal boxes. I know that grammatical and punctuation errors are a fact of life. Not everyone was an English major in college, blah, blah.

But some errors are just so easily preventable. Here's a little tip for all writers, editors, and publishers out there: running spell check is not enough. You actually have to read stuff before you put it in print!

Here's a recent error I found in the novel "You Suck: A Love Story" by Christopher Moore. And I quote:

"Jeez," Drew said, then realizing that he had said it allowed, he cleared his throat and said, "I'll be right there." p. 223

On a similar note, here's an excerpt from a recent article in the New York Times:

Is It Ripe, or Rife?
By Philip B. Corbett

Even in the rush to publish, writers and editors at The Times strive for polish and precision in our prose. Sometimes we succeed.

But sometimes, after the dust settles, we are dismayed to see painful grammatical errors, shopworn phrasing or embarrassing faults in usage. A quick fix might be possible online; otherwise, the lapses become lessons for next time.

These comments are adapted from After Deadline, a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual. The goal is not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions.

Since most writers encounter similar troubles, we think these observations might interest general readers, too.

Words to Watch: Ripe or Rife?
These similar-sounding words are easily confused. “Rife” means (among other things) “full of, abounding in,” and is used with “with.” “Ripe” does not normally have that sense — it means, essentially, “fully developed, mature.”

The uncertainty is understandable, especially since metaphorically “ripe” may carry an overtone of “fullness.” Often we end up saying “ripe with” when we mean “rife with.”

A couple of recent cases where we went astray:
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Responding to an episode ripe with the potential to stoke unrest, the commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, held a meeting Saturday with Iraqi leaders.
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The blogosphere is ripe with tales of people who mail in their house keys to their banks rather than hold on to their depreciating homes, but there is not a lot of evidence that it is actually happening very often.

More Words to Watch
A colleague on the sports desk offered a few other pairs of words that we’ve occasionally mixed up. Beware:

1. loathe is a verb meaning to hate; loath is an adjective meaning unwilling or reluctant.

2. peddle means to sell; pedal is what you do to a bicycle.

3. chord in music and mathematics; cord for the spinal or vocal kind.

4. discreet means prudent, circumspect or modest; discrete means separate or individually distinct.

5. forward indicates a direction; foreword is the introductory note in a book.