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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:The Joy of Lex
Notice:A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:THEBAY::SYSTEM
Created:Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1192
Total number of notes:42769

1123.0. "When spelling-correctors go bad..." by LJSRV2::KALIKOW (Brother, can youse paradigm?) Fri Dec 02 1994 08:54

    I couldn't find an existing topic to cover this instance...  Sent to me
    by my daughter, the spelling-correction and general linguistics geek.
                                                
Subj:	Fwd: gnerd/political language stuff
    
This is actually pretty funny, at least from an automatic-spelling-correction 
point of view... 
 
	-- Jodie  
  
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Jodie Kalikow, Product Manager            Phone: 
Oracle ConText, Text Server Division      Fax:   
Oracle Corporation                        500 Oracle Pkwy.
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                Redwood Shores, CA 94065	  
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--------------------------------------
<forwards deleted>
     
The following sentence was taken from Richard Cohen's column on the 
editorial page of Tuesday's Post:
     
"GOP national chairman Haley Barbour instantly announced that New York City 
was no longer in the running for the Republican National Convention, and, 
more ominous, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, the state's leading Republican and 
Pataki's Disk Operating System (DOS), said he would not seek revenge on 
Giuliani."
     
The only explanation I can come up with (other than Sen. D'Amato really 
being a copy of DOS) is that Cohen typed 'doss' instead of 'boss', and the 
spelling checker not only corrected it to DOS, but spelled the acronym out 
since it's the first appearance of it in a non-computer-related news story.
     
Egad...
     
 Bob Bane, Global Science & Technology, Inc. 
 6411 Ivy Lane, Suite 610, Greenbelt MD 20770 
 [email protected], 301-474-9696
 SLOW .signature file under construction CAUTION
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1123.1JRDV04::DIAMONDsegmentation fault (california dumped)Sun Dec 04 1994 16:292
    Too bad the famed "grammer checker" of yore ran on a different
    operating system....
1123.2LJSRV2::KALIKOWCyberian-AmericanSun Dec 04 1994 18:182
         Said fame has not spread to these precincts.  Tell us more?
    
1123.3JRDV04::DIAMONDsegmentation fault (california dumped)Mon Dec 05 1994 16:405
    Huh?  Everything I know about Digital's attempt at a grammar checker,
    including its original designation of "grammer checker," came from
    this very conference.
    
    -- Norman Diamond
1123.4RICKS::PHIPPSDTN 225.4959Tue Dec 06 1994 05:271
VAX Grammar Checker             ABBOTT::GRAMMAR_CHECKER                     2031
1123.5operator error and spell-check wisdomAKOCOA::MACDONALDTue Dec 06 1994 09:5410
    This reply should perhaps better go into a separate discussion, since it
    points up what is more of an operator error than a spell-checker error,
    but anyway--. I was using the MS-Word spell checker on a longish
    marketing document a year or so ago and was both amused, and astonished
    that the spell-checker suggested that for "seamless", I might want to
    substitute "shameless". I laughed and laughed, since, I would have to
    agree, my use ( and our overuse) of the word was perhaps in some sense
    "shameless." The dumb spell-checker seemed at that moment to possess
    a wisdom that I lacked.
    Bruce
1123.6SEND::PARODIJohn H. Parodi DTN 381-1640Tue Dec 06 1994 11:276
    
    I remember that the VAX/VMS spell checker once suggested I change the
    VMS command qualifier /NOSAME (don't ask) to /NAUSEUM. I could but
    agree.
    
    JP
1123.7NOTIME::SACKSGerald Sacks ZKO2-3/N30 DTN:381-2085Tue Dec 13 1994 09:113
There was an interesting spellchecker error in a notesfile a while ago.
The noter mentioned BayBank, a large Massachusetts bank.  The spellchecker
corrected it to "bubonic."
1123.8SMURF::BINDERvitam gustareWed Dec 14 1994 05:292
    ...and you call that an error???  I'd call that the operation of an
    unusually perceptive spelling checker program!  :-)
1123.9Light blue touchpaper and run...PEKING::SULLIVANDDumb terminalFri Dec 16 1994 05:0810
    I wrote a memo and included a Welsh phrase in it. I spell-checked the
    memo and WPS-PLUS said "Initializing Houghton Mifflin British Spell
    Checker" (approximately). It then proceded to reject all the Welsh
    words !
    
    Welsh IS British ! AngloSaxons go home !
    
    (We have a couple of people here called Alan Punnett and Barry Robson;
    at various times they have been spellchecked into Alien Peanut and
    Barmy Robot)
1123.10LJSRV2::KALIKOWI&#039;m webbish but I&#039;m no nebbish!Fri Dec 16 1994 07:179
    The wonderful thing about such technology-spawned neologisms is that
    they tend, because of their silicon etymology I s'pose, to be adopted
    and kept around for awhile.  I suspect that Messrs. Punnett and Robson
    have by now discovered this.  On the audio side, my kids and I were
    playing with Macintalk about 6 years ago, by typing in semi-random
    ARPAbet phonemes into its speech synthesizer.  This succeeded in having
    the Mac "address" one of them whose input it was as "Frog Maiden" and
    this recurs, in moments of hysteria, to this day! :-)
    
1123.11This just in from my wife...DRDAN::KALIKOWMindSurf the World w/ AltaVista!Fri Jun 07 1996 11:1610
         "I wanted to share with you what I think may be the best spell
         checker substitution suggestion ever!  I'm typing up my notes for
         my journal of our trip to Turkey, and I was writing about
         appetizers in a restaurant.  The silly thing wants to replace
         aubergines with aborigines!  It gives me a hysterical mental image
         just thinking about it!"
    
    Will some public-spirited soul work this into the Limerick Addition
    Football note please?  Thx EVER so. :-)