How to Catch Typos by Printing Your Emails

Spell checkers are great. They do not alarm you when you substituted one homophone for another, though, or when your reaching for the wrong key accidentally formed another entirely correct word that just means something completely different. Misplaced commas are another point spell checkers usually do not touch.

What you need is a third pair of proofreading eyes (let's assume the spell checker forms a pair, too) — which, of course, you usually don't have (or want) when composing an email. Depending on who you mail and how important the message, you may get away with a typo or two. Sometimes you feel you wouldn't, however, or maybe you abhor all spelling mistakes — especially your own.

Catch Typos by Printing Your Emails

Trying to find your own misspellings in an email, just reading it usually won't do it. Going through what you have typed backwards is better, but what really makes a difference for some people is reading in print.

To catch typos in an email you are about to send:

• Print the message you are composing and proofread the printed copy.
  • If your email program does not allow you to print the message, highlight all the text, copy and paste it into a text editor or word processor document, and print that.
  • Make sure you use your printer's Draft mode and as little ink as possible. It's faster.