Nissen v Nissan – the joys of spellchecking @mishaherwin @rasumova @ktscribbles #amwriting #dyslexia

Because of my dyslexia I do keep the spellchecking function on as a matter of course but Microsoft and other software/social media sites can make this incredibly frustrating.

I have watched as Word especially (though Facebook can be as guilty) will change a word, without red-underlining it, not just once but several times after I have gone back and altered it.

These anomalies can often be put down to syntax – i.e. when writing dialogue where characters are not speaking in grammatically correct sentences.

At other times it is down to the software’s limited dictionary. I always have Word in the UK, rather than US, spelling and language mode but still have occasions when it throws a wobbly over Z versus S.

Because The Bunch Courtney Investigations are a crime series set in WW2 the number of ‘unrecognised’ words rises by some margin.

Today it was ‘Nissen’, as in Nissen hut. I was typing fairly quickly to get my ideas onto the screen before it vanished into the ether and simply did not notice Word’s ‘Spellchecking Ninja’ sneaking along behind me and changing Nissen to Nissan in every case.  (Incidentally, WordPress also does not like Nissen and is scoring red lines beneath it – but at least has the decency not to just change it willy-nilly.)

Had I not had the paragraph read back to me by Word’s ‘Speak robot’ I would probably not have noticed for a long time – perhaps at all.

Yes, I have now added Nissen to the dictionary, as I do with many words many times before, but the frustration of having them changed at all remains.

All I can say it thank the deities for editors!