Spellchecking and Proofreading

Your words ­ and their spelling, punctuation and grammar ­ are as important to a layout as the design itself. Why even bother if you can't communicate your message?

Our computer software has built-in dictionaries and dynamic spelling features to help us with spelling which you'll learn to use, however spelling checkers won't correct homonyms, grammar or punctuation. For instance,

they're their there

are all spelled correctly, but their meanings and usage are different. Develop an eye for typographical errors.

Here are some of my proofreading tips:
• Look at each word carefully
• Assume words are spelled incorrectly
• Read text aloud
• Read text backwards, word by word

InDesign's Spelling Checker

In InDesign, you can check a story, the entire document or all open documents. With your document open, go to Edit > Spelling > Check spelling and follow prompts to find and replace spelling errors. If you want to see spelling errors as you type (such as are in many email programs), to to Edit > Spelling > Dynamic spelling. Incorrectly spelled words will be highlighted with red underlining.

No, there is no extra credit for finding typographical errors on this site. But thanks anyway.

Find/Change (Find and Replace)

A very useful tool is the Find/Change function in InDesign. Go to Edit > Find/Change and type or copy and paste characters into the "Find what" and "Change to" boxes. Many search and formatting functions are available -- not only can you change text, but you can change type styles, Character or Paragraph Styles, special characters and more.