Maybe it’s just the writer in me, but there is nothing I love more than typing away on a keyboard first thing in the morning.  Finger flying, keys clicking away, and the words spilling out like they were always meant to be there.  Until I glance at the screen and see all the red squiggles screaming for attention, that is.  Last time I talked about my most annoying typos, but now I want to explain the importance of word flubs in more detail.

Word flubs expanded

There are a few expressions for these, but word flubs is probably the most common.  A friend of mine once called them finger farts, so that is my personal favourite!  Anyway, in my last post, I talked about “form” vs “from”, and that’s a common typo/word flub hybrid that I’m known for typing.  But word flubs, aka finger farts, are something more in-depth.  It’s pretty much the same as autocorrect, but meaner.  Let me explain.

Some autocorrects can be caught by spellchecks, but some can’t.  Even smart, context-based checks don’t always catch these flubs.  I personally believe that’s one area where AI-based spellchecks can actually be helpful!  More on that a little later, though.

For example, the most common word flubs that I get, regardless of what I’m writing about, are:

• Viking instead of bikini: When I type one, the other pops up.  Regardless of what I’m writing about, they switch while I’m working away on the next few words of the sentence.  I have no idea why, but it’s led to some interesting final read-throughs, that’s for sure.

• Canoe instead of can be: This one always makes me laugh.  I don’t know when or why this started happening, but typing “can be” often — but not always — leads to it switching to “canoe.”  Again, final read-throughs can be a great laugh that is often needed after a hard day.  Perhaps it’s a gift in disguise…

Read your words, people!

While it is amusing, it is also proving how important it is to manually read through everything that you write before you send it off to a client or, worse, publish it online.  Similar to how autocorrect works against all of us, word flubs can be the “ugh, seriously?!” of the word processing world.  And from the point of view of a professional writer, they can give the appearance that we don’t care enough to read our content all the way through thoroughly.

If you’ve read my post about my honest review of Grammarly as a professional writer, you know that I’m not the biggest fan of the newest version.  However, I also have to say that it has the best automatic spellcheck for my word flubs, since it tends to learn about my typing and what I tend to mess up on the most.

But that’s enough from me.  Fellow writing professionals, what spellchecks do you trust for word flubs?  What are your most common word flubs?  Please tell me I’m not the only one…