Great article, Scott. A trick I use in Final draft is to open the find function (COMMAND F), type "their" in the FIND box and "there" in the REPLACE box. I then click through the whole script checking for errors. I do the same for all similar words.

In school, I always remembered "the principal is your PAL." And that the Capitol dome has an "o" in it. But I figured we all learned those.

Thank's Scott! You're blog entry today is EXACTLY what I needed to here. Its going to really help me. Your the man!

I had this kind of English teacher when I was 17! She was a communist too. We didn't have computers to run the spellcheck at the time. And she was ruthless. My 2 cents of contribution: Choose - Chose Lose - Loose Whether - Weather Effect - Affect Compliment - Complement

"However" is not a conjunction, so you can't join two sentences with it and a comma. It is NOT interchangeable with "but." WRONG: April bought a juicer yesterday, however she lost the instructions and doesn't have any idea how to work it. RIGHT: April bought a juicer yesterday. However, she lost the instructions and doesn't have any idea how to work it.

I actually AM an English teacher, so I like this post. Some others: --to, too, and two --"used to" not "use to": He is used to the heat. -- same thing with "suppose": He was supposed to go to the game. (Not: He was suppose to go to the game.) --in the U.S., periods and commas ALWAYS go inside the quote marks. (This isn't spelling, of course.)

Thanks for your contributions to this list. Every little thing counts when doing that final edit of a manuscript.