spellchecker

A computer application that identifies possible misspellings in a text by referring to the accepted spellings in a database. Most spellcheckers function as part of a larger program, such as a word processor or search engine. See also:

• Commonly Confused Words
• Cupertino Effect
• Dictionary
• Grammar Checker
• Lessons in Proofreading: Typos, Orpahs, and the Little Demon Titivillus
• The Spell Checker Poem
• Top Spelling Rules
• The 200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words
• Typo

Examples and Observations:

• "Microsoft's language experts also track word requests, as well as frequently corrected 'words,' to assess whether those words should be added to the Speller dictionary (Speller is the trademark name of Microsoft's spell-checker). One recent request was pleather, meaning a plastic faux leather, which was added because of a lobbying effort by the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. If you've got the latest goods from Microsoft, pleather shouldn't get a red squiggly.
  
  "In other cases, real words are intentionally kept out of the program's dictionary. A calender is a machine used for a specialized manufacturing process. But most people see calender as a misspelling of calendar. The wordsmiths at Microsoft have decided to keep calender out of the program's dictionary, figuring that at the end of the day it's more useful to fix so many misspelled calendars, than it is to cater to the sensibilities of a small subset of the population who happen to know of, and want to write about, calenders. Similar homophones (computer people call them 'common confusables') include words like rime, kame, quire, and leman."
  (David Wolman, Righting the Mother Tongue. Collins, 2008)



• This apology was printed in the Observer's "For the Record" column on March 26, 2006:
  
  "A paragraph in the article below fell victim to the curse of the electronic spellchecker. Old Mutual became Old Metal, Axa Framlingon became Axe Framlington and Alliance Pimco became Aliens Pico."