A few random thoughts about spell-checking
Beth Friedman
wrote:
>The nice thing about this particular program, though, is that along
>with the "accept" file, to which it adds things like people's names
>and technical terms, there's a "reject" file. You can't get at that
>from the window that lets you add words, you have to edit it by hand.
Word has this as well -- they call it an exclusion dictionary. Mine
contains such words as "manger" and "thee." It used to have "tot,"
until Word 97 added the ability to do autoreplace on multi-word
combinations, so that it could deal with my common mistake of typing
"tot he" instead of "to the."
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Vicki Rosenzweig
dic-size wars, but I also had a couple of thoughts on the
general subject of spell-checking, which I figured I might
as well jot down and share with you.
The first thought is that properly, the stupid things should
be called "spelling checkers"--spell-checkers are what student
witches need. But usage is like that, no point worrying about it.
The second thought is that they aren't really spelling checkers.
It's more like using a dictionary during a Scrabble game: it doesn't
matter what the word means, only whether it exists.
The editing-and-layout software we use at my office (Arbortext
Publisher, no longer supported, but it does what we need) has a
fairly standard spelling checker interface: if you hit a word it
doesn't know, you can tell it to change the word (to one of its
suggestions, or to something you type in), to ignore it this time or
throughout this session, or to add it to the dictionary. The
thing is, it's very specific: teach the machine the word "aardvark"
and it will still flag "Aardvark" and "aardvarks." The other approach,
of course, is for the software to cheerfully add prefixes and suffixes,
as the old Unix 'spell' program does--which is fine as long as
you don't mind letting "aardvarker" and "misaardvark" into your
documents. Okay,you probably don't mind those--in fact, I think I
need to find a use for the word "misaardvark"--but some of
us want to flag "funguses" and "gruntled" as suspect.
The nice thing about this particular program, though, is that along
with the "accept" file, to which it adds things like people's names
and technical terms, there's a "reject" file. You can't get at that
from the window that lets you add words, you have to edit it by hand.
My .pubreject file is, at this point, a rather odd document. There
are a few entries that I can't remember the reason for, in the sense
that I neither remember why I felt the need to watch for them, nor
know what they were doing in the dictionary to start with: "withe"
and "trehalose," specifically. (That I'm writing this entirely without
looking at the files, or even logging on to the system in question,
may give you some insight into the workings of my brain.)
The interesting part, though, is the words that are perfectly
legitimate, and belong in any decent-sized dictionary [if not
in your phrasebook of English for tourists], but that I've flagged
as "ask me about this": "manger" is a perfectly good word, but
we've never needed it in anything published in *Computing Reviews*,
whereas "manager" turns up in every issue. Similarly, "discus"
and "discuses." If my other software were as flexible, I'd use
spell-check more.
On the other hand, while the first version of this program we got
had all these facilities, it also had a habit of making suggestions
so far afield that I seriously suspected someone had fed it the
Honolulu telephone directory. Would you like to buy a vowel?
--
Copyright 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Permission to insert links when
displaying is available for $100 per link. Use in this fashion
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Deb Geisler
>
> The interesting part, though, is the words that are perfectly
> legitimate, and belong in any decent-sized dictionary [if not
> in your phrasebook of English for tourists], but that I've flagged
> as "ask me about this": "manger" is a perfectly good word, but
> we've never needed it in anything published in *Computing Reviews*,
> whereas "manager" turns up in every issue. Similarly, "discus"
> and "discuses." If my other software were as flexible, I'd use
> spell-check more.
I've cursed over the limitations of spell checkers since I first used one in the
early 1980s. Damn, but I was proud. Damn, but I was good. After running the
check, the only word it didn't like in my very first spell-checked document was
my last name.
So I believed it.
And I gave a syllabus to 30 freshmen that said, "Speech 101: Pubic Speaking."
Freshmen will eat you *alive* when you do something like this.
Now, I double-check everything that's going to print.
Deb Geisler
--
Deb Geisler
Department of Communication & Journalism
Suffolk University
Boston, MA 02114
Voice: 617.573.8504
Email: dgei...@acad.suffolk.edu
"Sure, everyone always said 'Socrates what is the meaning of life?' or
'Socrates how can I find happiness?' But did anyone ever say 'Socrates
hemlock is poison.'???"
-Socrates, minutes before death
Irv Koch
<snip perfectly agreeable material>
Having to do with encounters with one or more fans (one deceased) who
were known as "the aardvark?"
> "gruntled" as suspect.
Quite right. HAPPY "grunts" (foot soldiers) should be very suspect
indeed. If they're not complaining, something's wrong.
<snip>
> The interesting part, though, is the words that are perfectly
> legitimate, and belong in any decent-sized dictionary [if not
> in your phrasebook of English for tourists], but that I've flagged
> as "ask me about this": "manger" is a perfectly good word, but
> we've never needed it in anything published in *Computing Reviews*,
> whereas "manager" turns up in every issue. Similarly, "discus"
> and "discuses." If my other software were as flexible, I'd use
> spell-check more.
After I reread the above, I suspected the following is NOT the case, but
worth asking anyway. Did you, by any chance, at some time, try to use
the spell checker as a "cliche" word catcher? E.g., catch "manager"
because you wanted to see if administrator, boss, or whatever, would do,
instead, to prevent overuse? Just a long shot.
(All other paragraphs of this post written under the influence of silly
stuffed animal rugs.)
Ulrika O'Brien
regularly typoed "with the". I do variants of this all the time,
where my typing fingers elide a repetition of something that has
gone by "too recently" for whatever their algorithm for too recent
is.
--
Ulrika O'Brien * member fwa * Rabble without a clue
John Kensmark
> The second thought is that they aren't really spelling checkers.
> It's more like using a dictionary during a Scrabble game: it
> doesn't matter what the word means, only whether it exists.
The office I used to work in used many old word processors (like
Borland's Sprint), and one of them--though I can't remember
which--had a spell-checker which would attempt to use context to
determine what word you wanted when suggesting correct spellings.
It didn't work well.
> Okay,you probably don't mind those--in fact, I think I need to
> find a use for the word "misaardvark"--but some of us want to
> flag "funguses" and "gruntled" as suspect.
I agree 100%, but I feel compelled, as if by a spot of bad beef, to
point out that "gruntled" is a real word and listed in many better
dictionaries. Its use is either archaic (in which case it means the
same as "disgruntled", but is less emphatic) or recent (in which
case it's a backform that means the opposite of "disgruntled"). I
had an office mate who regularly used "gruntled", so this came up
now and then.
> There are a few entries that I can't remember the reason for,
> in the sense that I neither remember why I felt the need to
> watch for them, nor know what they were doing in the
> dictionary to start with: "withe" and "trehalose," specifically.
I run across "withe" all the time. It occurs--in my case--when I'm
typing rapidly and my fingers put an "e" on the end of "with" to try
to turn it into "the". I type "the" a lot, so the reflex tries to
overpower the weaker "with". This happens with other word
combinations, too, but of course I can't think of any others right
now.
"Trehalose" is mysterious. I'd swear it's familiar, but I'm
probably fooling myself.
> On the other hand, while the first version of this program we
> got had all these facilities, it also had a habit of making
> suggestions so far afield that I seriously suspected someone
> had fed it the Honolulu telephone directory. Would you like
> to buy a vowel?
You've no doubt seen the game of letting MS Word's spell-checker
make suggested corrections to proper names, just to see what it will
change them to; a kind of electronic oracle. Noteworthy examples
used to find their way into computer magazine columns and websites.
John Kensmark kensmark#hotmail.com
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in this country.
Ask any Indian.
Janice Gelb
>
>I've cursed over the limitations of spell checkers since I first used one in the
>early 1980s. Damn, but I was proud. Damn, but I was good. After running the
>check, the only word it didn't like in my very first spell-checked document was
>my last name.
>
>So I believed it.
>
>And I gave a syllabus to 30 freshmen that said, "Speech 101: Pubic Speaking."
>
>Freshmen will eat you *alive* when you do something like this.
>
>Now, I double-check everything that's going to print.
>
I once spell-checked a document to give to a group of
writers at work and was on my way to the photocopier
when I luckily noticed that it said that "Dependent
clauses are set off by comas."
***********************************************************************
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"Politics is show business for ugly people" -- James Carville
Laurel Amberdine
news:3997810C...@my-deja.com...
>
> You've no doubt seen the game of letting MS Word's spell-checker
> make suggested corrections to proper names, just to see what it will
> change them to; a kind of electronic oracle. Noteworthy examples
> used to find their way into computer magazine columns and websites.
I recently discovered that MS Word flags "husbands" as incorrect,
while "wives" is correct. Do I detect a bias?
--
-Laurel
Inspirational Quotes for Writers: http://www.mtco.com/~lbamber/quotes.htm
Babble: news://news.sff.net/sff.people.laurel
Steve Glover
deja.com> writes
>"Trehalose" is mysterious. I'd swear it's familiar, but I'm
>probably fooling myself.
Alpha-1,6-glucosyl glucose. I seem to remember an experiment where we
fed Carbon-13 labelled trehalose to tobacco moth(?) caterpillars and
used magnetic resonance to watch the labelled carbons zap off around the
Krebs cycle... Chemistry was fun in those days.
Steve
--
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Available from - 14/08/00
Home: steve at fell.demon.co.uk, 0131 551 3835
Away: steve.glover at ukonline.co.uk, 07940 584 653
Beth Friedman
wrote:
>I once spell-checked a document to give to a group of
>writers at work and was on my way to the photocopier
>when I luckily noticed that it said that "Dependent
>clauses are set off by comas."
I once had a set of revisions that needed to be done very quickly, and
the woman who wanted it said not to proof the changes, just
spell-check it. So I did. And she came back later in an absolute
huff, accusing us of forgetting to spell-check. The word she pointed
at as the proof of our laxness was "continuos."
That one soon afterward ended up in the exception dictionary.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Mary Kay Kare
> I run across "withe" all the time. It occurs--in my case--when I'm
> typing rapidly and my fingers put an "e" on the end of "with" to try
> to turn it into "the". I type "the" a lot, so the reflex tries to
> overpower the weaker "with". This happens with other word
> combinations, too, but of course I can't think of any others right
> now.
>
I can no longer type "file" without backing up, deleting the k and putting
the e in.
MKK
--
Member:
fwa
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RASFF Fire, Usage, and Whinge Brigade
Worldwide TAFF Cabal (there is no cabal)
Leroy Berven
"Mary Kay Kare" <ka...@sirius.com>
> I can no longer type "file" without backing up, deleting the k and putting
> the e in.
Do you give yourself a rasp-berry when doing so?
--
Leroy F. Berven
ber...@wolfenet.com
Thomas Womack
"Steve Glover" <st...@fell.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:pJxfntAo...@fell.demon.co.uk...
> In article <3997810C...@my-deja.com>, John Kensmark <kensmark@my-
> deja.com> writes
> >"Trehalose" is mysterious. I'd swear it's familiar, but I'm
> >probably fooling myself.
>
> Alpha-1,6-glucosyl glucose. I seem to remember an experiment where we
> fed Carbon-13 labelled trehalose to tobacco moth(?) caterpillars and
> used magnetic resonance to watch the labelled carbons zap off around the
> Krebs cycle... Chemistry was fun in those days.
And it's also the chemical which allows certain plants to survive total
dessication, which has obvious SFnal applications -- I think it's used
nowadays in preserving blood cells, and there's a proposal, at which level I
don't know, to use it to transport vaccines to the fridgeless depths of
Darkest Nowhere.
Tom
Alan Braggins
> >"Trehalose" is mysterious. I'd swear it's familiar, but I'm
> >probably fooling myself.
>
> Alpha-1,6-glucosyl glucose.
Surely the mysterious part is what is it a plausible typo for?
Steve Glover
<ar...@ukgateway.net> writes
>> >"Trehalose" is mysterious. I'd swear it's familiar, but I'm
>> >probably fooling myself.
>> Alpha-1,6-glucosyl glucose.
>Surely the mysterious part is what is it a plausible typo for?
Oh, indeed... it's also known as (can't read old writing) mycose or
mucose, but being a synonym for a mis-spelling of 'mucous' probably
doesn't cut it...
The 'tre-' prefix gives the word a Cornish look, somehow, though, so
could that Baskerville dog have been one of the Hounds of Trehalos, an
Ancient British analogue/avatar of Tyndalos?
Steve,
David Dyer-Bennet
> "John Kensmark" <kens...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:3997810C...@my-deja.com...
> >
> > You've no doubt seen the game of letting MS Word's spell-checker
> > make suggested corrections to proper names, just to see what it will
> > change them to; a kind of electronic oracle. Noteworthy examples
> > used to find their way into computer magazine columns and websites.
>
> I recently discovered that MS Word flags "husbands" as incorrect,
> while "wives" is correct. Do I detect a bias?
It's silly, because you might well be speaking of a class of people --
"Husbands tend to be lazy bastards", or whatever. Both are equally
useful / likely / applicable.
In terms of bias -- I believe polygamy is legal a lot more places than
polyandry, so the use of wives for that reason would be much commoner
than the use of husbands.
--
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David Dyer-Bennet / Welcome to the future! / dd...@dd-b.net
Del Cotter
David Dyer-Bennet <d...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>"Laurel Amberdine" <cir...@NOSPAMmtco.com> writes:
>> I recently discovered that MS Word flags "husbands" as incorrect,
>> while "wives" is correct. Do I detect a bias?
>
>It's silly, because you might well be speaking of a class of people --
>"Husbands tend to be lazy bastards", or whatever. Both are equally
>useful / likely / applicable.
You might also be using the word as a verb, as of one who husbands his
resources.
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:abanBadLand:EricIdleTheRoadToMars:JohnBarnesApocalypses&Apostrophes
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David Hansen
It seems to me, from a purely physical standpoint, that one wife could
service multiple husbands easier than one husband could service multiple
wives...
And yet the male seems to "want it" more...
--
-Dave /;^{D>
(Warning: Reply-to address has been changed - Death To Spam!)
"Del Cotter" <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:11xMCDD8...@branta.demon.co.uk...
> On Thu, 17 Aug 2000, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
> David Dyer-Bennet <d...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>
> >"Laurel Amberdine" <cir...@NOSPAMmtco.com> writes:
> >> I recently discovered that MS Word flags "husbands" as incorrect,
> >> while "wives" is correct. Do I detect a bias?
> >
> >It's silly, because you might well be speaking of a class of people --
> >"Husbands tend to be lazy bastards", or whatever. Both are equally
> >useful / likely / applicable.
>
Thomas Womack
> I recently discovered that MS Word flags "husbands" as incorrect,
> while "wives" is correct. Do I detect a bias?
An experiment:
CUSTOM.DIC has no words between hoovered and hyperelliptic, or between
Huggie's (belonging to a man nicknamed Huggie) and IDL (a special-purpose
language for data visualisation).
I start up Word 97, and type
"The frugal polygamist husbands his wives."
I spell-check the document. No spelling mistakes are found.
Which Word are you using? It's clearly broken.
Tom