I have completely forgotten how to spell, thanks to MS Word's autocorrect feature. There was a time when I used to rock my elementary school spelling tests, but now...not so much. So even if you think you've spelled everything correctly, even if you're absolutely positive that you've double-checked all of those red-underlined words, run the spellchecker.
And after you've done that, read every word over again. I cannot emphasize that enough. Just last night, I was reading a new release by a very popular novelist, and I came across a sentence that read "It wasn't the biggest thing in the word, but it mattered to me."
Nothing in that phrase will ding your spellcheck (and it obviously didn't ding the editor's spellcheck), but I'm willing to bet it will be corrected in future editions.
Doing a careful, not-for-content read-through is one of the single-most important things you can do to improve your copy and make sure the message you send is one that benefits your organization. A few weeks ago, I did a last-minute read-through on a piece of copy for a client and noticed we were trying to "dowse the flames." Oh. My.
Many typos will pass through the spellchecker: from/form, this/tis, where/were, our/are, etc. Other common mistakes are confusing they're/there/their and your/you're. Some people will read over them, understanding the meaning from context. You might do this yourself, since you're the one who wrote them in the first place, which is why it's a great idea to ask a fresh pair of eyes to take a gander at your copy.
But make sure you do it. Run that spellchecker and read through everything one last time. You'll be amazed at what you find...and your readers will have one less reason to reject your copy and one more reason to give.
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