With the onus now on all of us to type, format and distribute our documents, it's no surprise that errors can creep in on the journey from keyboard to printed documents. Even the bigger players can get it wrong. Being equipped with professional designers, copy writers and proof readers did not prevent a large council body from committing a few basic proof reading errors - that cost them dear in reprinting and redistributing.

First the council sent out 60,000 postal ballot cards with the incorrect return date (the date appeared as the year before). When a revised, reprinted second card arrived through the post, local householders noticed that the date was now correct, but the council city name was missing an 'h'. A list of instructions also stated: "make it is not left where someone else can pick it up" − leaving out the word "sure".

The same council was criticised previously when it used a photograph of a city in America with the same name as the UK city. The image was reproduced on 720,000 leaflets issued to promote recycling. Needless to say these ended up in the council's waste paper bin sooner than anticipated.

But reading and re-reading doesn't always mean that your document is going to be free of errors. Typos - or the fat finger syndrome - can happen to anyone. However if you are using Word 2007 there are professional tools which can help ensure you eliminate any screamers with spelling and grammar. Word is the ideal program for editing documents that are primarily text. As a word processing program, Word has the full complement of features needed for text editing: spell check, grammar check, auto format, auto correct, version tracking, change tracking, and the ability to compare documents.

Word enables multiple authors/editors to make changes to the document, allows for a complete, detailed review of those changes, and then provides the capability of incorporating the changes into the text to create a final, clean document.

Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar checking functions are part of the proofing tools. These are found on the tabs in the review group of commands. Proofing is similar to the edit functions in earlier versions of Word but is more user-friendly and intuitive in the 2007 version. The proofing tools enable you to proof your document working with spelling and grammar. Also part of the proofing tools are reference materials, dictionaries, translation, word count, and readability indices.

Word can accommodate many different languages, dictionaries, and spell checkers, and you can change language settings at any point during the creation of your document. You can assign different languages to different sections of your document. You can do this by selecting review from the main task bar in Microsoft Word 2007. Under proofing, select 'Set Language'. Language sets are then displayed alphabetically. In this section, you also have the option of setting the default language for all new documents. An additional feature of Word 2007, allows you to turn the spell and grammar checker on or off. If you prefer to do all proofing when you have finished writing your document, then you will want to turn it off. If you want to know about any errors as you type, then leave this option on.

Auto Correct allows you to manage a list of commonly misspelled words and to have them corrected as the document is typed. This feature can also be used to insert repetitive words or phrases that would otherwise require many keystrokes. This is done by assignment of an acronym or code, the same as you assign a speed dial button on your phone. The Auto Correct list can be added to manually in the options screen. It can also be added to while undertaking an actual spell check. This is done by selecting AutoCorrect after selecting a replacement from the list of suggestions.

Auto Correct also allows the automatic insertion of a suggested spelling from the spell check dictionaries. To make changes to the Auto Correct settings, activate the spelling and grammar function, and select options. The first heading is the Auto Correct options. Here you can set the Auto Correct features, and edit the replace text as you type list.

Obviously there may be times when you choose to ignore or leave a misspelled word unchanged when running a spell check. Once ignored, the spell checker will not identify this word as misspelled again in any subsequent spell checks. If you need to find and correct these words, using the spell checker, you need to reset the spell checker. You can do this by going to 'Office, Word Options, Proofing'. In the proofing pane, select 'Recheck Document'.