SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- Without those red squiggles under misspelled words in Word, how well can Michiana residents spell? We put them to the test.

The first word: rhythm.

"R-Y-T-H-M," said Shaina Poland. Wrong.

"R-Y-T-H-Y-M," said Kathy Lentych. Wrong again.

Ok, let's try a different word: recent.

"R-E-A-S-E-N-T," said Poland. Incorrect

"R-E-C-E-N-T," spelled Fritch correctly.

Valerie Kaczmarek manages the Goodwill Career Center on Grape Road and says the vast majority of the resumes she edits are full of spelling mistakes.

"I mean I've had people misspell South Bend and that's where they're from," said Kaczmarek.

In today's job market, a misspelled word lands a resume in the do-not-hire pile. She says spell-check programs seem to be doing more harm than good.

"We're so used to the spell check now as we're typing on computers that we're not studying up on it as much as maybe we did in the past," said Kaczmarek.

Struggling spellers also blame text slang, abbreviations and hashtag lingo, and this is nothing to LOL about.

"Before you'd have to know or you had to look it up in the dictionary," said Ashley Cory.

"There's too many spell check easy things to do- you don't have to learn it," said Lentych.

Three Michiana spellers clearly own a dictionary and use it. Now they are trying to spell their way to Friday's National Spelling Bee championship. There's only one word missing from their vocabulary.

"M-I-S-P-E-L-L," said Grace Kelly, forgetting an "S."

And will they make Michiana proud?

"D-E-F-I-N-E-T-L-Y," said Angelique Kayitesi.