Talk:Spell checker

message: I think the history section could do with a re-write. "The spell command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX". UNIX Version 6 came out in 1975 (http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html). I suggest that the section is qualified with personal computers and references to UNIX and VMS are removed. Philip Baird Shearer 17:41, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think anyone would mind if you be bold. I don't really know enough about the topic. Deco 03:06, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: As we are talking personal computers, I added in the TRS-80, which was at least as significant as CP/M at the time. I could point to a contemporary article on TRS-80 spell checkers, but its in a big PDF file.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hellinar (talk • contribs) 23:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

text: If the article is titled “Spell checker”, shouldn’t the article reflect that by using the same spelling? Otherwise it should be moved to “Spelling checker”, which as of this writing is the spelling that the article actually uses. —Frungi 01:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: History

message: In the late '80s there was small a word-processor called PC Write that would click at you (once) whenever you finished typing a word it didn't recognize. After that once incident, in-line spell-checking disappeared for a long time (requiring scanning as a regular chore) until it appeared in (I think) a Windows 3.1-era MS Word edition was released that featured the jaggy red lines that are now everywhere and are standard practice. This was a major development in spell checker interface design, and there should be a chapter, at least in the history section, that talks about it.
Myself, I'm a lazy bastard, but if this is left alone and no one objects, I'll write up a blurb and leave it to someone else to verify it or find citations.
Uriel-238 (talk) 19:22, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If the article is titled “Spell checker”, shouldn’t the article reflect that by using the same spelling? Otherwise it should be moved to “Spelling checker”, which as of this writing is the spelling that the article actually uses. —Frungi 01:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Inline Spellchecking

message: Maybe Harry Potter needs the former, muggles need the latter. Jordi·✆ 11:22, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If the article is titled “Spell checker”, shouldn’t the article reflect that by using the same spelling? Otherwise it should be moved to “Spelling checker”, which as of this writing is the spelling that the article actually uses. —Frungi 01:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Spell checker]] → [[Spelling checker]]

message: The poem in this page belongs to someone. The question is who. The first version I encountered came on a piece of paper I found on a desk at the grade school I was attending at the time. The second version - which is probably the original - was published in The Journal of Irreproducible Results. The third version (the one in this article) appears to be the product of exstensive wiki editing. -Litefantastic 18:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the poem has to be attributed.  My little search reveals the following: The poem was written by Jerrold H. Zar on 29 June 1992, under the title "Candidate for a Pullet Surprise".  According to Zar, he was inspired by a single-stanza poem written by Mark Eckman.  Zar's original poem had 9 stanzas but did not include as many spelling errors as the version currently on the Wikipedia page.  Zar himself claims to have written the poem in 1992, but it has also been published (under his name) in a journal in 1994.   At best, I think the Wikipedia page should attribute the poem to him. -- 41.177.9.98 (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: On the poem

message: The spellchecker for Microsoft Office Word 2002, for example, can and does check grammar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aleph2.0 (talk • contribs) .
:To be precise, the spell checker (red squiggle) and grammar checker (green squiggle) are two separate pieces of software in Word. --Mikko Silvonen 10:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: On the poem's note

message: I'm recommending SpellJax to be added to the list of external sites. It's free and has no advertising from what I can see. I found it through the TWiT podcast.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanleyshilov (talk • contribs) 03:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added another Spell checker 

message: The "poem" in this article should be removed. It does not show a spell checker or help a reader understand what a spell checker is. It simply shows the fallibility of it. It could be considered POV because of its obvious message that spell checkers are simply put bad. I think a more appropriate image to place at the top of the article would be the image near the bottom of the article. That image shows an actual spell checker rather than a poem.. YaanchSpeak! 18:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So far the only rationale you've offered for removing the poem is the POV claim. The other rationales you've given may justify adding another item, but they don't justify removing the 'poem'. Moreover, your POV claim seems like a statement of your personal opinion, since nothing in the text of the poem itself, or the caption, makes any kind of value-statement about spell-checkers at all, let alone an "obvious message" that "spell checkers are bad." Therefore, I'd answer "no" to your question. dr.ef.tymac 01:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Yaanch. The point of the poem is to show the ineffectualness of spelling checkers, and to provoke laughter. The former violates NPOV (unless it’s moved to a to-be-created section about said ineffectualness), and the latter is irrelevant. Unless such a section is created, or a counterexample is provided, the poem doesn’t belong. —Frungi 14:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I also agree that it should be removed or moved below elsewhere in the article.  To put what Yaanch says a different way, the poem can grossly misrepresent spell check software -- there is not a single word actually misspelled in the poem, but a lot of words that are the wrong ones (homophones).  In my opinion, the poem should be reduced to one or two stanzas, and placed under the functionality  heading.  The place that the poem occupies is the area usually used for example images, it should have an image of a spell check in action, not text that highlights a well known but understandable limitation.  The poem also comes with absolutely no reference as to its source. Underjack (talk) 14:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove Poem? 

message: I'm puzzled by the section entitled "Spell-checking other languages."  I hesitate to edit it, though, in case I'm missing something.  This sxn starts out: 
"English is unusual in that most words used in formal writing have a single spelling that can be found in a typical dictionary, with the exception of some jargon and modified words."
It's true that most words used in formal writing can be found in typical dictionaries (with, I suspect, the significant exception of chemical names and the scientific names of plants and animals).  However, I'm not sure what "single spelling" has to do with this.  I would omit it, but maybe I'm missing something?  If I am missing something, then it would be good to add an explanation of what it is I'm not understanding (on the assumption that other readers will be as dumb as me).
The article goes on:
"In many languages, however, it's typical to frequently combine words in new ways."
and then talks about compounding.  While compounding is a problem for spell checking, and requires some computational morphology input, I imagine inflectional morphology (and for some languages, perhaps derivational morphology) is also a problem.  In fact in an earlier section, the article alludes to the difficulty the inflectional morphology of Finnish and Hungarian causes for spell checking.  This section should distinguish that problem from compounding, and then I would think it should talk about solutions.  For some highly inflecting languages, it is virtually impossible to supply a spell checking dictionary that has all forms; you need some kind of morphological parser or transducer, such as a finite state transducer.  (We're working with one such language, and I came to this article in hopes of finding pointers to how people had combined FSTs with spell correction algorithms.)  Mcswell (talk) 13:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In most Indo-European languages it's typical to deal with inflectional morphology by merely including all inflected forms in the dictionary; this does greatly increase dictionary size but that's not an issue. I don't offhand know of any work that deals with languages with such complex inflection that they require special processing - this appears to be a more difficult problem than dealing with compound words, since there might be spelling alteration with certain suffixes. If it turns out your work is novel, I hope you'll publish something about it. :-) Dcoetzee 00:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

text: Not to nitpick, but English uses compound words every bit as much as German, and the rules for compounding words are pretty much the same in all Germanic languages. The only difference is orthographic. English writes each element of most compound words as a single graphical word, whereas German maintains the correspondence between orthography and grammar. I don't know if anyone has done a study to see which is easier to read.Bostoner (talk) 00:14, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spell-checking other languages 

message: This article seems to  still have a conversational/informal tone, and some POV (lack of refs/citations?). Perhaps a copy  edit into encyclopedic style is due.Kudpung (talk) 20:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikifying

message: Since when is there a dictionary in a spell checker?  A dictionary contains words & definitions.  A spell checker contains words only without definitions (AFAIK).  In database speak, a spell checker is a single column database... PERIOD.  I propose changing dictionary to file.DEddy (talk) 01:51, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The American Heritage Dictionary gives this as definition 4a of dictionary: "A list of words stored in machine-readable form for reference, as by spelling-checking software." Iain Dalton (talk) 21:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dictionary? 

message: I thought that WordPerfect did there own spell-checkers until version 6 in the 1990s.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.32.98 (talk) 13:04, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  WordPerfect 

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thread_title:  External links modified