Director of Private Sector Programs
& Administrative Director of Honors Lawyering Program
A few years back, the following paragraph made its way around the Internet:
“Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”It turns out that there was no such study at Cambridge University, but that’s really beside the point. What’s remarkable about this paragraph is that, despite the fact that nearly every word is misspelled, most readers can still process the content at normal speed. Thanks to a phenomenon known as pareidolia, the brain turns out to be quite adept at spotting overarching patterns and filling in the missing pieces.
The problem is that as helpful as these mental shortcuts can be, when it comes to proofreading your own work, your brain can do you a disservice. Time and time again, when reviewing students’ resumes and cover letters, I find misspelled words arising from missing letters.
Turning on the spell check function in your word processor can catch most of these mistakes—the paragraph I quoted above is lit up like a Christmas tree on my screen—but that’s not always the case. Take this sentence, for example: “Though my extensive experience working at Mulligan & Graves, I developed significant research and writing skills.” The first word should be “through,” not “though,” but because the latter is an actual word, it won’t turn up in a spell check. Thanks to the mind’s helpful tendency to fill in missing gaps, some people overlook the missing “r” when proofreading that sentence. That is especially true if the student is proofreading her own writing, because she knows what the word is supposed to be.
Employers tell us that even a single mistake in students’ application materials can sink their chances at landing a job, so catching these stealthy typos is extremely important. Knowing of the brain’s tendency to gloss over parts of words is a good starting point. So is the awareness that spell check can lull you into a false sense of security. The key to overriding your brain and spotting these typos will vary from person to person, but if you have fallen prey to some of these mistakes in the past, you might try reading your cover letters out loud, running your finger over the text while reading, or magnifying the size of the text on your screen. What also helps is to share your writing with someone else. Whether it be a career counselor, friend or spouse, other people are further removed from your writing and are more likely to spot such mistakes.
