Eye halve dun it again…

Spelled the term send as sent. It drives me crazy that I keep doing it and that my eye, somehow, doesn’t catch this. I know why it doesn’t, and the excuse is that it was drilled into me that it is spelled ‘sendt’ and so it is, but in Danish.

I want some sort of mnemonic device (short and clear) that will help me get it right without having to go over the text looking for this moronic spelling error.

Do you have a suggestion?

Hi Nanna!

Many times our eyes play trick on us and we don't see what we should see. For that reason, in my case I always use a spell checker once the translation is finished.

As you know you keep making this same spelling mistake, you can use the function "search" and try to detect if you've written the word wrongly.  Or think that SEND is an acronym:

SEND

Simple, Effective, Necessary, Done (successful email)

I hope it's helpful.

Marisa

Hi, Nanna.

SenDING makes sense. SenTING does not.

A ding has a ring, but a ting does not.

David

Using the 'search' function is a great idea, Marisa, and one I hadn't considered.

I also like the Ding/Ting thing, and despite the fact that 'ting' is the Danish word for thing, it may work. Thank you, David.

Of course, there's no way the spell checker is going to catch 'I have send/did you send' versus 'I have sent/have you sent' (which is where I make the mistake), even when I use one as a final check on a document ready to go. I don't use a spell checker for posts, but I edit all the time, as most of us do.

As for being 'the great proof-reader', I've always caught the mistake, but that's because I proofread at least twice, often tree times, and I leave several hours between the first and the second proofreading.

Because I keep repeating the mistake, I'm afraid that one day I'll not see it and senT off a doc with the wrong spelling.

And no, becoming a translator wasn't something I decided on yesterday afternoon...

Nanna

Since a number of these words are based on grammatical patterns, it is good to search on the general pattern.  the pattern here is "ndSPACE" and "ntSPACE" where SPACE is one space inserted with the spacebar.  the use of SPACE here is not as crucial for the nd/nt opposition, but it is good to get into the habit of using it, because some patterns might appear in different parts of the word, and will make you spend time chcking irrelevant examples.

In addition to spelling checkers, an associated grammar checker can catch some of the contextual examples.

Jeff