This past Saturday I received a letter from a prominent university in Spokane, WA. The letter, on official university letterhead, detailed a piano sale from their music department. The letter was fine…until the very last sentence. At that point, they blew it.

Credit cads? Sigh…

This is the problem with relying on a spellchecker. The word ‘cads’ isn’t misspelled, so it didn’t get a squiggly red line placed under it to notify the writer of a potential problem. The problem lies in the fact that ‘cads’ is simply the incorrect word to use in that sentence (it should be CARDS).

So, please, please don’t just trust your spellchecker! I imagine this letter was mailed out to thousands of people in our area. I’m sure one of the journalism or English majors at the university would have done an excellent job of proofreading this letter and rectified this embarrassing mistake if they would have been given the opportunity.

Just food for thought…