Here’s a short post about spell checkers
I’ve never been a great speller but I’m somehow able to misspell words so badly that spell checkers can fail on me, as seen above when describing the state of my glasses.
In most cases when I’ve misspelled a word, the spell checker just can’t figure it out – it knows the word isn’t in its dictionary, but it doesn’t actually suggest the word I’m after. I don’t really picture the words – words are thought of as sounds instead – so I try to rewrite the word by sounding it out, which can introduce other misspellings to the text. But after a few attempts the spell checker can now get close to the word I want.
For instance, I recently typed “proflicit”, but the spell checker could not find the word I was actually after; it suggested ‘proclitic’, ‘proclivity’ and ‘prolixity’. After I sounded out the word, I typed “prolifict”, which did lead to the spell checker to find the actual word I was after, prolific.
In other cases, the spell checker fails outright – the word is misspelled but it has no similar words it can possibly suggest. I once typed “counterintuvately”, which Microsoft Word said ‘no spelling suggestions’. A different spell checker suggested ‘Counterintelligence’, which is also not the word I wanted. I was actually trying to spell ‘Counterintuitively’.
Another instance: I typed “irrocivility” with no spelling suggestions. I retyped it to “irrevsibility” and still got no suggestions. A different spell checker suggested ‘proclivity’, then suggested ‘reversibility’ or ‘irresponsibility’. After several attempts I finally got the word I wanted: ‘irreversibility’.
Here’s a few other words I’ve attempted to spell and the checker failed:
- “diviosn” -> division (suggestions were ‘Davison’, ‘Davion’, ‘divisor’ and ‘divvies’)
- “culumnation” -> culmination (suggestions were ‘calumniation’, ‘columniation’, ‘illumination’, ‘accumulation’)
- “opacte” -> opaque (it got close, it suggested ‘opacity’)
- “Respitory” -> respiratory (suggestions were ‘repertory’ or ‘resistor’)
But then there’s times where the checker truly and utterly fails, like the one pictured up top. When I first saw it happen, I took a screenshot. According to file creation date on that screenshot, this happened in 2014 (I’ve since got a new pair of glasses). I retyped it into the Steam Chat a few days ago to see if such a failure was fixed since then; instead, it produced the same error – ten years later! So the screenshot above is actually from Steam Chat a few days ago. The other spell checker was able to guess I meant scratches. ‘avalialbe’ is another failed find:
And then finally there’s also… whatever this is. It’s displaying the misspelled word which… was nothing what I had typed.
I don’t even remember what I was attempting to spell, but it certainly didn’t have numbers mixed in!
Since spell checkers can’t figure out what I’m actually trying to type, I’m afraid of what any autocorrect features would do – I’ve never tried them, so I don’t even know how much worse it would be!
Orthallelous 
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