Although a helpful tool, don’t rely on the spell checker alone for proofreading. Most fast readers are bad proofreaders because their minds fill in the correct information. To slow it down enough to catch the mistakes, try reading the copy out loud or touching each word as you read.
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Don't forget to mention items like they but you miss the y so it shows as the,spell check doesn't catch correct words so you do have to slow it down and read it. I catch many (not all) but most of my mistakes from doing this.
Yup--There are a bunch of them: to/too/two/, where/were, do/so (I did that one yesterday!!), etc. My personal demon is from/form. I did that so much in college that I ran searches for it before I turned in papers.
Another thing that I teach my writing students is to make a 1/4 inch by 1 inch notch in an index card and run it along the bottom of a sentence so it isolates a small section. It's not my favorite personally, but a lot of people swear by it.
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