Sunday, 10 January 2010

When Spellcheck goes bad

I’m quite a sloppy typist at times and find myself increasingly reliant on right-click spell-check-and-correct functionality in both Word and whatever web browser I’m using.  It’s not so much that my spelling is dodgy, but rather that I’m prone to a fair few typos.

Imagine my frustration then, having misspelt the word ‘better’ (I’d missed one of the t’s) that the options for correction were:

Biter

Beater

Beer

Belter

Beret

spellcheck goes wrong How can typing the word ‘beter’ not trigger spell-check to recognise the most likely correct word was ‘better’?

Perhaps spell-check has been tweaked in the beta of Office 2010? :-$

I guess I could always just focus on making fewer typos. Hmmm.

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11 comments:

  1. Android10 January 2010 at 12:29

    There is a bug in Russian version of Office... If you type a sentence 'I want to avoid going to the army (i.e. national service)', Word would highlight it as grammatically incorrect, and suggest another sentence structure giving another sentence as an example, which read: 'You cannot avoid going to the army'. ;D True story.

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  2. Michael10 January 2010 at 12:35

    Wow... let's hope there's a patch for that! :)

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  3. cmckei10 January 2010 at 12:39

    Michael, I'm shocked that better wasn't suggested. least the wiggly red lines alert you to the typo to correct it yourself.

    Andro. that is scary and funny at the same time. :) I love it!

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  4. Android10 January 2010 at 13:25

    I tested Opera and Gmail spell-checkers... They're just as bad as Office! Opera>> & Gmail>>

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  5. Barmaid10 January 2010 at 14:35

    Unfortunately spellcheck didn't recognise my faux pas regarding 'pubic' law on an application for pupillage.

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  6. Michael10 January 2010 at 14:42

    LOL - that's tragic but extremely funny!!

    Word bizarrely insists on spell//grammar/context checking certain words/phrases so pubic/public should be an obvious target.

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  7. Android10 January 2010 at 16:44

    Barmaid, no way! That's hilarious (in retrospect)! :D Was it successful? :D

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  8. Barmaid10 January 2010 at 17:08

    Funnily enough no it wasn't successful! Perhaps chambers thought it was too niche an area to specialise in? :-)

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  9. Anonymous10 January 2010 at 22:39

    Love the Russian army story. I have a friend who used to program video games, and he told me that they would always build in a well-hidden "bug" of some sort. Like the 1,000th time you did a very specific maneuover, a character in the video game would turn and swear at you.

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  10. Rockon11 January 2010 at 05:31

    I want to avoid going to the army (i.e. national service)', Word would highlight it as grammatically incorrect, and suggest another sentence structure giving another sentence as an example, which read:

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  11. Cowgirl in the City13 January 2010 at 16:02

    Evil spell check... but I think the grammar check is even worse!

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