We trust spellcheckers to be right, right? We expect that the spellchecker will yield an accurate correction, or at the least, real words. Oddly enough, though, I’ve stumbled upon a few misspellings that cause Leopard’s built-in spellchecker to throw up some amusing–though incorrect–results (a friend shared one with me; I discovered two of them). Mind you, I never added any of these to my spellchecker dictionary. These are all using the default English spelling dictionary; I even checked while using a new user account. At any rate, here they are, in no particular order:
The typo: instrucitons
The intended word: instructions
The suggested spelling: isntrucitons
The notes: The spellchecker does offer the correct spelling as one of the choices; how isntrucitons ended up in there is beyond me…
The typo: applicatication
The intended word: application
The suggested spelling: applicaticataion
The notes: FAIL.
Also, Dictionary.com offers up upland cotton as a possible alternate for applicaticataion and no alternates whatsoever for applicatication. That said, it was one heck of a typo on my part in the first place, but that’s no excuse for making up words! :P
The typo: positiove
The intended word: positive
The suggested spelling: positionve
The notes: Like the first one, the correct word was among the choices, but again, Leopard decides to have a little fun with our minds.
I’m guessing these are just bugs in the spellchecker. Hey, at least this bug is mostly harmless!
Are there any words that you have noticed that spellchecker gets incorrect? Let us know in the comments.
lol
Intended word: lol
Suggested: loll, lola
Inc.
Intended: Inc.
Suggested: Inc.
That’s my current most annoying spellchecker issue. ;)
-jon
lol is not standard English right now so it will be marked as misspelled.
I’m pretty sure these are words in your custom dictionary, not the stock dictionary. to check, clear your custom dictionary ( I think you can do this from the settings/general menu).
I don’t have those problems with mine, atleast. Remember, it learns words you type a lot and adds them.
Intended: Hell
Suggested: He’ll
Sometimes you just want to say “It was funny as hell” or something similarly quick, but it almost always comes out wrong and everyone wonder who “he” is.
[...] a funny post at The Apple Blog today that points out a few typos that give Mac OS X Leopard’s built-in spell checker a bit [...]
I heard on the radio recently that some high school put the year book through the spell checker before sending it to press. Of course, the names got horribly mangled. Dumb to do that and not check the results.
[...] a funny post at The Apple Blog today that points out a few typos that give Mac OS X Leopard’s built-in spell checker a bit [...]
Funny, but this simply isn’t true!
instrucitons gives me instructions
applicatication gives me no guesses
positiove gives me positive
This article = FAIL
I get the same problems as Nick. I tested it in text edit. ‘lol’ should be marked as misspelled, but the suggestion loll makes no sense (I get that suggestion also.) Though, I do not get the same results that Jon and Gorm got. Hell and Inc. are not shown as misspelled on my computer.