Clicking the link below will open up a Word file that has a special menu up alongside the help menu. The special menu is called "Lurking". Clicking on the button on that meny will start a macro that finds “lurking” words. Lurking words are words in your document which the Word spell checker will not pick up because they are actually correctly spelt words you did not intend to use.
For example, the following sentence has 6 errors which would not be detected by the Microsoft Word spell checker:Thee woman of the pubic company brining the action argued that the literal working of the statue allowed them to….
The macro checks for over 500 words which are correctly spelt, but which may not have been the work..err, I mean….word….you intended to use. The list of words checked for is displayed as the program starts. The lurking words are highlighted red.
You should copy and paste your document into the Lurking file and then run the macro to highlight the lurking words.
Click here to download the lurking file to your computer. After clicking this link you can open or save the document, but you should save it to your computer because, depending on your browser, the menu might not install properly if you open it in the browser. You can also right click the link and then "save target as"; which also saves the document to your computer. To open the document on your computer, you will have to have your macro security settings set to "low" or "medium". To confirm that your macro security setting is set to medium, open Word and click tools, macro, security, medium.
Many highlighted words are ones seldom seen in legal documents e.g. whet. Other words highlighted are ones for which the plural is sometimes inadvertently used instead of the plural e.g. “defendants” instead of “defendant’s”.
This program is a work in progress. As I discover more potentially lurking words, I will add them. If you know of one not currently listed, let me know and I will add it
It is always good practice to save documents before running macros. It is especially good practice to update the name of your file every few saves and keep the old copies as emergency backups.
