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Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Okay, so the red squiggle is there to help you when you’ve typed a word that’s not in the dictionary. And the green squiggle is there to catch grammatical errors. But, Contextual Spelling is pretty good at telling you when you’ve typed in a word that’s probabilistically not what you intended, based on the context.

Can I fine a good example to show you? (Okay, I did that on purpose.)

Here’s what it looks like in Office 2007:

Contextual Spelling is not turned on by default (unless you have 1GB of memory of more).

You can also use Contextual Spelling in German and Spanish if your SKU of office supports either language.

Do you want to sea more? (Ha! I did it again!)  There have already been some great posts on the new feature.  Thierry Fontenelle is a renown lexicographer in our group and has his own blog in which he overviews CSS.  Daniel Escapa (Information Worker Program Manager for OneNote) also brought up the new feature in his blog.  And, Jensen Harris (Program Manager in Office Shared) blogged about CSS as well.

-- Jay Waltmunson (Program Manager)

Published Monday, June 19, 2006 8:47 PM by nlgblog
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Thursday, August 03, 2006 11:25 AM by Office Natural Language Team Blog

# Paging Sargent Batchelor

Brand new in Office 2007: a red squiggle on the name Batchelor.  Uh oh.  I’d better explain....
Wednesday, October 25, 2006 1:40 PM by The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog

# Contextual Spell Checking

Spellchecking is not perfect, but I would not have gotten through school without it. :) Despite my love

Tuesday, October 31, 2006 4:00 PM by Office Natural Language Team Blog

# Update: People Still Smarter than Computers!

Jonathan & Margaret over on the Word blog have some nice words about the contextual spellchecker

Thursday, November 16, 2006 1:08 PM by Office Natural Language Team Blog

# Shouldn’t we use the Office 2007 contextual speller when writing a news release?

It’s interesting to see how useful the new Contextual Speller feature in Office 2007 can be. If Office

Monday, November 20, 2006 12:46 AM by CorrecteurOrthographiqueOffice

# Le correcteur contextuel d’Office 2007

J’ai eu l’occasion de parler sur ce blog (en anglais) du nouveau correcteur contextuel introduit pour

Friday, December 29, 2006 1:06 AM by WebLog de Stéphane PAPP [MSFT]

# Correcteur contextuel

Thierry Fontenelle du groupe Microsoft Natural Language Group anime avec d’autres collègues un blog autour

Thursday, January 04, 2007 1:42 PM by Office Natural Language Team Blog

# Go Blue Squiggles! Mossberg praises contextual spellchecker

Some lovely words about the contextual spellchecker from Walter Mossberg's review of Office 2007 in today's

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:59 AM by Lozzaw

# re: Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Is there any reason why I get the squiqqly lines with some errors (e.g. The plaintiff will asses the damages no later than Tuesday) but not others (e.g. He was loosing so much time.)

Sunday, June 10, 2007 12:15 AM by OrthoFR

# re: Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Hi Lozzaw,

In fact, Office 2007 squiggles the two mistakes in the sentences you give above:

The plaintiff will asses the damages no later than Tuesday.

He was loosing so much time.

Asses gets a blue squiggly line and, if you right-click, you'll see that "assess" is suggested. In the second sentence, "loosing" is underlined and the contextual speller suggests "losing".

So that does not seem too bad, does it?

Thierry

Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:55 PM by Daniel Delahoyde

# re: Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Yes, it's good and about time too. This spell check functionality was noticeable by it's absence rather then being on anyone's wish list. But all these squiggles are getting confusing. Added to that the effort required to right-click all those squiggles and select the right spelling/grammer choices and these added features become added work. I'd suggest using the auto correct to automatically correct these contextual errors, just like Office does already for obvious spelling errors. I'd say in 99% of cases the user would want these corrected. That means 99% less spell check right-clicking.

Now all that's left is for MS to put spell checking into Internet Explorer, to help while writing comments and posts like this one. (The Firefox browser has had this for years!)

Wednesday, December 05, 2007 8:57 AM by Dave Tery

# It finds a few, it misses a few

Unless there is a particular issue with the version of Word 2007 I'm using, then the grammar check works most of the time. It still misses some very obvious, and simple contextual errors.

Here are my examples:

Cut the lemon in halve. (missed)

Cut an orange in too. (missed)

The made cleaned the house today. (missed)

The clowns were at the fare. (missed)

We made every effort to be shore the grammar check wood find these errors. (missed)

We made every effort to make shore the grammar check wood find these errors. (missed)

We could not sea the sign. (found)

The ship sailed the see. (found)

No one came hear for dinner. (found)

Did you here me? (found)

Anyone have any ideas?

Monday, December 24, 2007 7:17 PM by nlgblog

# re: Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Hello Dave,

Thanks a lot for your message and your questions.

The spell checking feature in Office 2007 makes an educated guess about whether the word you are using is appropriate for the context. This improved spelling feature helps you avoid some of the most frequent mistakes and misuse of similarly spelled words.  If the examples you sent are actual user errors, then we're grateful to have them to help us improve.  

You can find some more information is earlier posts about our contextual speller, for instance in this one: http://blogs.msdn.com/naturallanguage/archive/2006/10/31/update-people-still-smarter-than-computers.aspx  

As you will see, the feature was designed to help with the kinds of errors people actually make when typing. Unlikely errors will not be caught. For the sentence “Cut an orange in too”, it’s pretty hard to spot this one, given the distance between "cut" and "too". If you had "Put an orange in too", the sentence would be nearly identical and would be fine.

It is always possible to do better, of course so if you have lists of actual mistakes, don’t hesitate to send them and we’ll add them to our corpus.

Thanks,

Thierry Fontenelle

Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:53 AM by Carole Moreno

# re: Cool new feature in Office: The Blue Squiggle

Is there any way to customize the blue squiggle?

I am working on getting certified in medical transcription, and there are several terms that are very similar and as I find what they are, it would be great if I could add them to a list of words that would be automatically flagged, reminding me that I need to check again and make sure that I'm using the correct word/spelling.

I love that the dictionary and autocorrect features are customizable... I'm just really hoping that I can utilize this newest feature to its fullest potential!!  Thanks!

Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:54 AM by Carole Moreno

# Customizing the Blue Squiggle??

Is there any way to customize the blue squiggle?

I am working on getting certified in medical transcription, and there are several terms that are very similar and as I find what they are, it would be great if I could add them to a list of words that would be automatically flagged, reminding me that I need to check again and make sure that I'm using the correct word/spelling.

I love that the dictionary and autocorrect features are customizable... I'm just really hoping that I can utilize this newest feature to its fullest potential!!  Thanks!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 4:00 PM by Joel

# please can I get rid of the blue squiggle?

How can I get rid of the blue squiggle? It literally underlines all the text in my document. So annoying!

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