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Ever have your spell checker fail you?

by Scott Ames
5 replies
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I am really puzzled. I spell checked a report before I sent it out for review. It corrected some words, but the reviewers caught a bunch of words still spelled incorrectly. I don't see how that happened. I am using OpenOffice. Has that ever happened to you?
#checker #fail #spell
  • Profile picture of the author DogScout
    Sometimes there are really obscure real words close to the ones you meant. They don't show up as misspelled because they aren't. They just make no sense when read in the context of the sentence and it becomes clear you meant a different word.

    for example, insure and inure. they mean 'almost' the same thing (but different enough to get someone in a legal bind), but in most cases 'insure' was what a layman meant to spell and inure was what a lawyer meant to spell, neither would be flagged by most spell checkers because they are both words and in most cases would even make grammatical sense, but mean two completely different things.
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  • Profile picture of the author Elmer Hurlstone
    Yep, all the time.

    In Open Office and MS Word and the included spell checker in WP and on WF posts.

    I'm not so sure it's the spell checker failing me as opposed to me failing the spell checker.

    It may be a problem with mass. Relative to the size of the squiggly underline used by most spell checkers the actual word is massive. Add to that once you've typed a word it's implanted, however you've spelled it, in your mind.

    You'll see what you expect to see.

    If you naturally spell well it's less a problem. I don't, ergo, big issue.

    Despite being a poor speller I'm a good "finder of misspellings". No, I don't know why.

    Elmer
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  • Profile picture of the author ghyphena
    Scott, are you talking about the fore/four, bear/bare type of failure where the words are still real words... the no-spelling-error-but-syntax-screws-up-meaning failure (like my friend who sent out a job request letter that started off with "Dear Sir, I write to you to express great interest in the receptionist")... or out-and-out spellcheck failure where it just doesn't pick out mssqllngs?

    I've had plenty of the first two, but MS Word does a splendid job of picking out misspellings and non-words (such as, you know, "copywriting")...

    Gil-Ad
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  • Profile picture of the author jacktackett
    As Gil-Ad pointed out, spell checkers don't help with homonyms or with incorrect usage.

    Also as much as I like OpenOffice Writer - its spell checker is not up to the same level (yet) as MS Word.

    Finally - my story on incorrect usage was I gave a report at Nortel once. We were doing inventory and had not been able to locate several large switches (@75K a switch you can imagine this was a big issue). After a few weeks we were able to find all of them. So I was proud to display my power point slide where I stated

    All large Assess found!

    I meant Assets...but at least I spelled the other word correctly ;-)

    Luckily Canadians are pretty laid back so everyone laughed.

    --Jack
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  • Profile picture of the author KimW
    The best spell checker is you and your mind.
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