"I ran a spell check!" was the first thing I whispered to myself as my editor pointed out my error. It was an earth-shaking, gut-wrenching feeling. Over a period of reading and writing countless words, I have realised that spell check alone is not enough. I am not denying the importance of spell check, but I am suggesting that it is not flawless. It informs you that a string of letters does not form an acceptable word, but it does not indicate that you intended elicit instead of illicit or that you meant principle instead of principal . It gets worse when you deal with technical or localised content. I believe you still need to proofread your work, regardless of how well you use spell check. There are simply too many similar words in any given language for spell check to get rid of them all.