Spell Checkers are very useful tools, but they do have some limits.
As learning to speak the English language is comparatively easy, it has become the modern day lingua franca. There are three principal reasons. First, conjugation of most verbs is simple. Second, irregular verbs are few. Three, unlike other languages, nouns do not have masculine or feminine genders.
Learning to read and write English is not at all easy. The principal reasons being spelling variations, homophones and silent letters. These reasons create problems for even the most sophisticated of Spell Checkers.
Spelling
Differences between English and American spellings are many. For example, Colour/Color and Centre/Center. A Spell Checker originating in Britain may not recognize the American spellings and vice versa.
Homophones
There are hundreds of homophones in the English Language and its American version, creating major problems for Spell Checkers, although some of the more sophisticated will recognize a misspelled word that is out of context.
For an example, copy and paste the following into an e-mail then check its spelling.
Children, sit down to dinner. Mom has cooked
you a nice young friar and fries using not two much greece.
Their are moor than fore spelling errors hear. Sea how many the spell checker will fined.
Spell Checkers will note a word that is phonetically misspelled provided it is not itself a homophone. For example, Ruff instead of Rough.
Silent Letters
There are thousands of words with silent letters which cause problems for a Spell Checker.
For Example: This perfume has a lovely sent.
Malapropisms
Malapropisms occur too often as was the subject of a recent newspaper article, despite (or in some cases, because of) the use of a Spell Checker.
Lauch Faircloth, while senator from North Carolina, took the floor saying: "When we drive the tobacco industry into bankruptcy as a piranha, what will we attack next? (Of course he meant pariah.)
The writer of Miss Manners column on etiquette, Judith Martin, last January wrote: "That was seen as casting aspirations on other people's pleasure." (She of course intended to write aspersions.)
Contractions
While rare in scholarly and scientific writings, contractions are commonly employed elsewhere.
Spell Checkers will recognize a contraction as being incorrect when the required apostrophe is missing. For instance, shant.
Where the absence of the apostrophe creates a word of its own right the error will not be noted. For example, Can't/Cant and
We'll/Well.
Typographical Errors
Spell Checkers are very useful in spotting these,
provided the error does not create a recognizable word, for example:
Missed letters: List/Lit
Transposed letters: Pest/Pets
Mistyped letters: Deer/Dear
WebTV's Spell Check System Facts
A big plus--both English and American spellings are recognized as being correct.
The correct spellings of many given and place names are included.
Spell Check is not available for use with Web pages, even with WebTV's own Page Builder.
