A better Spell Checker than in MS-Word?

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Elendur - 29 Apr 2005 19:21 GMT

Hello

I teach techies tech. English report writing. They are German natives.
The Spell Checker in MSWord is idiosyncratic, is not claimed by MS
(see MS website) to be much good and is ineffective in catching
punctuation errors, eg the German-based comma in "I told him, that I
would come". Nor does MW Word insert eg the requisite commas for the
non-defining relative clause in: "Transistors which are inexpensive
devices need repair sometimes" (maybe this ability has to await the
nirvana of the perfect parser?)

Does anybody please know a review article on Spell Checkers? Or can
anybody recommend one? Thanks,

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CyberCypher - 30 Apr 2005 03:35 GMT

Elendur wrote on 30 Apr 2005:

> I teach techies tech. English report writing. They are German
> natives. The Spell Checker in MSWord is idiosyncratic, is not
> claimed by MS (see MS website) to be much good and is ineffective
> in catching punctuation errors, eg the German-based comma in "I
> told him, that I would come".

The spell checker is not supposed to catch punctuation errors other
than missing or inappropriate apostrophes, eg, *"Rover is it's name"
instead of the correct "Rover is its name".

The spell checker in MS Word is based on a quite limited dictionary.
The words not contained in that dictionary can be added by adding a
second spell checker or by adding the words you need to the custom
dictionary.

Your complaint is about the grammar checker. Natural human languages
cannot be accurately checked by any grammar checker for at least two
reasons: grmmarians and linguists often disagree on what is
grammatically correct or acceptable; grammar checkers cannot
understand human languages well enough to know whether a sentence is
grammatical in context.

> Nor does MW Word insert eg the
> requisite commas for the non-defining relative clause in:
> "Transistors which are inexpensive devices need repair sometimes"
> (maybe this ability has to await the nirvana of the perfect
> parser?)

This has nothing to do with spell-checking but with punctuation and
with the acceptability of using "which" for "that" in restrictive
relative clauses. Many experts would find the "which" in the sentence
you provide perfectly standard English. I don't. I think it should be
"that" or ", which ..., need". On the other hand, I'd rewrite the
sentence as "Transistors are inexpensive devices that sometimes need
{repair / to be repaired}".

> Does anybody please know a review article on Spell Checkers? Or
> can anybody recommend one? Thanks,

The only good grammar checker is the brain of a competent native
speaker or non-native speaker of English who is as good or better.
You will not find what you are looking for. Don't bother looking
elsewhere.

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"You've got to get over this idea that there's a rule for
everything." Professor John Lawler, U. Michigan

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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / April 2005

A better Spell Checker than in MS-Word?