Contextual Spell Checking
Spellchecking is not perfect, but I would not have gotten through school without it. :)
Despite my love for spelling and grammar checking, I'm aware of its limitations.
Specifically, previous versions of Word will tell you when what you type is misspelled or grammatically incorrect, but it does not catch correctly spelled words in the incorrect context. For example, think of the times you've typed "go" and meant "got", "toll" and meant "told", "some time" and meant "sometime", etc. In these cases, your sentence/phrase likely didn't make sense, but previous versions of Word didn't squiggly underline the error because nothing was misspelled or grammatically incorrect.
This type of contextual limitation is epitomized by the anonymously authored poem "Ode to My Spell Checker":
Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh as soon as a mist ache is maid.
It nose bee fore two long and eye can put the error rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no.
Its letter perfect awl the way.
My checker told me sew.
With these limitations in mind, in Word 2007 we've got contextual spell checking. Specifically, in Word 2007 we'll catch errors in each of these sentences, not just the first two:
As always, the red squiggly underline indicates a spelling error and the green squiggly underline indicates a grammar error. Now we've got blue squiggly underlines to flag words that are likely inappropriate given their context. In the third sentence, when you right-click on "loose" we suggest "lose". Nice.
The Microsoft Speech & Natural Language group that created this technology has a great blog and a specific post on contextual spell checking here.
To wrap-up, contextual spell checking is a step in the write direction :) For example, here's a brief list of some sentences that Word 2007 squiggles and are squiggle free in Word 2003.
Let us know what you think…
-Jonathan & Margaret
