As editor, I read thousands of words each week. I have learned to read copy — written material produced by and submitted to this newspaper and for online – quickly. It is part of my job to get the copy ready for publishing and, luckily, I have a back-up, our copy editor. Both she and I take pride in our spelling skills, however, she and I have both missed misspellings. You could probably find some misspelled words in this week's issue. One good thing, however, she's found more of my misspellings than I have found in her writing.

Back in the day — 1987 and part way into the '90s — during my first few years on the job, editing copy was harder. Most everything was hand-written and deciphering an "a" from an "o," for example, took a few more seconds of my time. Now, with most of the copy being received electronically, editing the copy is easier as "spell check" functions in most word processing programs show if a word is misspelled. I do, however, still receive handwritten letters, news briefs and articles. One recent letter took me about 15 minutes to figure out the several misspellings and what the words were.

However, there are a few words in my 31 years of editing this newspaper that continue to be misused, not misspelled, but used in the wrong context. Its and it's, there, they're and their, led and lead, and lose and loose are just some of the words that people misuse in their writing. I learned my lesson a year into my job when a retired teacher sent me a nice note indicating that we were using the wrong "its" in the paper too often. I will never forget it — though I might miss those uses sometimes.

For some people, spelling is not important. As long as they get the point across, that's fine with them. I, on the other hand, am somewhat obsessed and get a bit tiffed at myself if someone discovers a misspelling in my writing. When watching TV or reading signs, I constantly pick out misspellings.

So, I am surprised that no one has alerted me to fix the misspelling on the "big" online house ad which appears off and on just below the list of section categories. The producer of the ad (no name needed) has it correct in the smaller ad touting the same message, but it has been bugging me for a week or more that one of the ads for "Looking for Work? This weeks featured help wanted ads here!" has the misspelling. Why haven't I mentioned it to the producer of the ad yet? I don't know but you can be assured that it will be fixed before the week is done! Perhaps because I have been spending my time fixing the words mentioned above — and many others. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The word “deciphering” was misspelled in the original post of this column. The editor was quite embarrassed when a reader pointed it out to him.