Office Natural Language Team Blog

We are currently running a survey on how users edit and review content and how they use proofing tools such as the spell checker, the grammar checker or the thesaurus in Microsoft Office. We want to learn more about user preferences so we can improve...

At the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans on 13 July 2009, we announced the launch of the Office 2010 Technical Preview. This technical preview can now be downloaded by thousands of customers. You can discover the innovations on the Office 2010...

On Monday this week, Microsoft launched the Office 2010 Technical Preview. Thousands of customers can now download this latest version of Office to try out the cool new features and provide feedback. Updates and Replacements The Technical Preview...

The Microsoft Translator from the Microsoft Research (MSR) is now available for download in the Microsoft Download Center . Another translation service for Microsoft Office? Do you need it? Well, more choices are a good thing—especially in the area of...

In this post, I would like to share with you the reasons why I love the French word chef-d’œuvre (=masterpiece). My interest for this word has nothing to do with its meaning. As a program manager working with computational linguists, I find it fascinating...

The post I wrote a few months ago about how users can remove a word from the main dictionary of their Office speller has been reprinted in the latest edition of Language Tech News ( vol.2, No.4, February 2009 ), a publication of the Language Technology...

Microsoft hat einen Hotfix für die deutsche Silbentrennung in Office 2007 veröffentlicht. Dieser Hotfix verbessert eine Reihe von inkorrekten Silbentrennungen bezüglich der Trennung von Präfixen, wie z.B. be-fasst, ein-lässt, auf-läuft , um-bringt , und...

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced an initiative targeting the Hispanic community , with special offers for Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 Language Pack in Spanish . It may be worth pointing out that the Spanish proofing tools in...

A few days ago, I discovered an analysis of our Office 2007 contextual speller carried out by Prof. Graeme Hirst, from the University of Toronto: An Evaluation of the Contextual Spelling Checker of Microsoft Office Word 2007 . We have discussed this...

A French translator was asking an interesting question the other day on the Word community newsgroup . He wanted to know how he could switch off the grammar rule which flags “Fragments”, i.e. incomplete sentence fragments that the writer is invited to...

The other day, I was discussing a number of suggestions to improve Office’s spell-checker . A customer was suggesting we should allow users to delete individual items from Word’s spell-checker lexicon. This feature is already available, in fact: if you...

A few days ago, James wrote about the articles the Seattle Times published about our Natural Language Group and the Office spell-checkers . One of these articles was encouraging the Seattle Times readers to suggest improvements ( What words would you...

Last week our group was visited by reporters from the Seattle Times, who took some photographs and talked to folks on the team about the challenges of developing software features that keep up with the world's rapidly changing languages. This morning...

For opening day this year, my beloved Chicago Cubs unveiled a statue of the immortal Ernie Banks . On its pedestal was engraved the catchphrase that made famous his enthusiasm for the game of baseball: “Let’s Play Two”. Except that the sculptor forgot...

Thinking about a couple of recent Language Log posts about grammar checkers, passive sentences , and grammatical Cupertinos , it occurred to me that grammar checkers are a bit like Rain Man . For the benefit of younger readers (no one alive in 1988 could...

A customer wrote to us recently with the observation that our English spellchecker doesn’t recognize the word ain’t , a fact which struck this customer as a tad, well, old-fashioned. Pedantic, perhaps. The words “uptight” and “shortsighted” might have...

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was released this week. Users who are interested in the French language will notice a change in the French spell-checker, which now takes into account the French spelling reform, which is recommended by official bodies such...

I just read Building and Exploring Web Corpora , which includes the Proceedings of the 3 rd Web as Corpus Workshop (WAC3-2007) held at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in September 2007. A number of papers describe how computational linguists have been...

During my vacation in December 2007, I had a chance to visit a friend of mine who works for the United Nations in Bangkok. On a Friday evening right before Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's visit to the UN Bangkok office, I chatted with his colleagues...

Our colleagues from the Microsoft Research (MSR) group have started blogging about the statistical machine translation (MSR-MT) system they are developing. We announced the Windows Live Translator when it was launched in September. Check out their blog...

There's a new blog out there from the team that's working on Enterprise Search for MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). They've got tips and tricks for administrators and will be posting info on features. It's a team that we work closely with, delivering...

For readers who are interested in the French spelling reform, two very recent articles published in Canadian newspapers in Montreal a few days ago discuss the penetration of the spelling reform, its slow but increasing adoption by teachers and the press...

Laurie asked us via the Email/Contact link: I was always under the impression that the Contextual Spell Checker only works if your language is set to English (US) rather than English (UK). However, I have recently seen the blue squiggly lines appear...

James was talking about endangered languages the other day. I have just finished reading David Harrison’s new book on “ When Languages Die – The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge ”, which I discovered via Michael Kaplan...

Kieran is a fellow linguist on the Windows International team, working closely with the team delivering Windows Desktop Search. She's got some great insight into language and technology on her "Loneliness of the Long Distance Linguist" blog. Check her...