Re-reading and editing in the middle of the nite when your tired isn't always good. Just had a resent hilarious case, wear I posted a draft to the GITS club, and BAAMMM. First sentence: missing a word.

I blame these fingers, trained to type fast by the AIM/MSN instant massaging that bombarded my high school and collage years. Mindless typing majority of the time.

(ps. nite, your, resent, wear, massaging, collage were misspelled on purpose.. such a jokester)

A rogue can wear rouge, but not the other way around.

If your character's boat is capsized by a rouge wave you owe the reader an explanation for the light-reddish color of the water.

Make sure you print the pages and read them. Don't try to find all your mistakes by looking at the monitor. You never will. Whenever I think I'm done with some writing, I print it out and read it. At least one error sticks out right away.

As Michael Rivers said: print it out. If you can't print it out, than convert the draft to a PDF document. For some reason you will find so many more spelling errors with your script in PDF format than you will reading it in Final Draft. I think it's because your script actually looks slightly different in PDF format than it does in FDR.

And tangentially related: I remember when I first had to learn how to spell "because" back in forth grade (or so). For a long time I would spell it out in my head as I wrote it. I said it in my head so many times that I can now rattle off the spelling just as fast as I can say the word itself.

Nicholas is absolutely right!!!! Convert the draft to PDF and you will find more errors. It's pain.

I used to send out typo-filled scripts, but now I've found something that's cheaper and even more effective than printing it out each time: I have Final Draft read the whole script to me (using Speech Control), and I fix all the typos as it goes. This has changed my life! Not only does it make every mistake stick out like a sore thumb, but it draws attention to bad dialogue, too.

iPod, iPhone, etc. -- I've read several scripts recently that spelled them Ipod, Iphone, etc. Makes me question the writer's grasp of their material.

Also: a lot (is two words not one)

The homonym thing really, really bugs even more than the regular misspellings. I once read a script where I pretty sure every instance of Its/it's and they're/their/there was wrong. It was like it had been grammar-checked on Bizarro World.

I'm with the others - printing always seems to help.

I’m truly dyslexic. So I literally can’t see a mistake. Before my script goes out I hire a professional proof reader to go over it two times! Then hire a second proof reader to recheck that work!

The little trick I've always remembered: two "ss's" in dessert stand for Straberry Shortcake; one "s" in desert stands for Sahara desert.

Two tricks I've found over the years.

If you can't print the document out or convert it to a PDF, change the font or make the font bigger.

I recently had a script come back with several misspellings to my chagrin, especially since I specifically remembered taking the time to spell check. I discovered that if I copied and pasted the final script with no misspellings from FD 8 to Word, EVERY ONE of the misspellings showed up. When I re-imported the unchanged script to FD, EVERY ONE of the misspellings showed up. I don't know why and haven't taken the time to check it out; it must be some weird glitch.

Word usage: The arrow affected the aardvark when it was shot at him. The effect was eye-popping when it actually hit him.

Lightning/Lightening I can't believe how many times lightening shows up in the sky in screenplays.

People often write "then" instead of "than" too. Grrr!

I'm late weighing in on this one, so it will probably be missed, save for GITS annals, but here is a great tip I do when it's SERIOUS time, i.e. the deadline looms --

But the tip is to take your printed draft -- and starting from the end of the script, READ BACKWARDS.

That's right. Backwards. One word at a time... because when we're reading forwards, we tend to skim, and may miss proper spellings.

Is it anal? Meticulous? Time consuming? You bet. But everything I write, I want it to pass scrutiny, and invariably scream -- professional. Which happens to be all those things; i.e. meticulous, anal, and more than likely, time consuming, as in, "this writer, really pays attention to detail."

Try it. It works.

RC