If you are a crochet and knitting designer you surely spend days and weeks creating your new designs, you put a lot of work and effort so that knitters/crocheters enjoy making your design and love it.
But there is something you must take into account before publishing a new crochet/knitting pattern, or before sending it to the tech editor.
I’m talking about spelling, something you sometimes neglect and which is very important.
A pattern full of spelling mistakes ruins your image as a professional and is not what you are looking for.
I’m going to tell you why you should care about the spelling of your patterns, how doing so can save you time and money, and I’m also going to tell you my two favorite tools for spellchecking.
I already told you a little about how important it is that your crochet/knitting pattern has the correct spelling.
Several things can happen if you publish your designs with mistakes, but the most significant ones are:
1- Crocheters/knitters may not understand your pattern well: many times there are mistakes that prevent to understand well what we have to make. Sometimes a misplaced comma, a missing accent or a misspelled word can make us get the wrong result, this in crochet/knitting and in everything in general.
2- As a designer, you will give a very unprofessional image of what you do. Your design can be very beautiful, have a perfect technique and be very innovative and original, but if it is full of mistakes people will not value it the same. You will be giving the image of being unprofessional and that you don’t care enough about what you do and don’t put as much effort as you should.
So now that you know this, get to work and check your spelling.
How does spell checking help you save time and money?
Well, if you are going to send your pattern to a tech editor (which is the most advisable for your pattern to go on air without mistakes) and it is full of spelling mistakes, the editor will spend much more time editing.
We all know that technical editing work has an hourly cost, so the longer the editor takes, the more you will have to pay for it.
A pattern with good spelling allows the editor to focus on more important aspects of the pattern, optimizing time and keeping costs under control.
My 2 Favorite Spelling Checker Tools
As a Professional Translator and Tech Editor of Crochet/Knitting Patterns I use several tools that optimize my time and my work (because yes, we use tools, and we are human) and spellchecking tools are one of the most important.
I am going to recommend you the two best FREE Spellchecking tools, the same ones I use every day as a professional, and that will help you a lot.
I must clarify that they are tools, not magic. You must know spelling to use them, you can’t trust them 100% because they are not human.
That said, I will show them to you and tell you a little bit about them:
LANGUAGE TOOL:
Language Tool is a spelling, grammar and style checker.
This tool corrects any text in more than 30 languages in an intelligent and easily applicable way. But it is the best for proofreading in Spanish (in my opinion, that is what I use it for).
Its functioning is very simple, it points out the errors in the text and shows you the possible spelling and/or grammatical corrections so that you can choose whether you want to apply them or not.
It is an extension that you can download for your browser and it is FREE, although it has a paid version (the free one is very good).
Once the extension is installed in your browser it will appear automatically when you write in Google Docs, Word, Canva and many other formats.
GRAMMARLY:
GRAMMARLY is another spelling and grammar checker, the best for correcting texts in English, and the one that I always use and recommend 100 %.
Its functioning is also very simple and is like the previous tool, it will mark the errors and give you suggestions for you to decide which one to use.
Like the previous one, it is an extension for your browser and totally FREE, although there is also a paid version.
Once installed, it will correct the spelling and grammar in almost all document formats: Google Docs, Canva…
You already know what to do to prevent your patterns from being full of spelling mistakes, I use those tools myself every day and they are the best.
Their free versions are more than enough for you to check your spelling and publish more professional patterns.
So much for today’s post, I’d love to know what tool you use to correct your patterns.
If you found it useful, SHARE it, so your friends can see it.
Have a nice day!