Monday, November 19, 2007

Wanted: Spell Check for Scientists!

I'm a terrible speller. Over the years, I've gotten by thanks to MS Word's speck check feature. Without it, you'd think everything I've written had been done by a scientist with a few letters in the wrong place on her keyboard (Or a disturbingly smart monkey. Take your pick). Still, I've got a lot of beefs with the spell check function. For starters, it makes me a worse speller than I already am. Some misspelled words just get red squiggles under them to show me they're wrong. Others it recognizes and changes automatically so I don't even know I didn't spell them right in the first place. And don't even get me started on when it changes words you don't want it to because it thinks you're trying to type something else. Finally, and here's my biggest beef, the spell check feature doesn't keep pace with scientific discovery, or in some cases even pay attention to 50-year-old scientific terminology. I'll write something for my work, and almost every other word will have the dreaded red squiggles under it, even though spelled correctly. Just take a look at this excerpt from something I wrote this morning. Seriously, how am I supposed to work like this:



1 Comments:

At 10:22 PM, Blogger fumanchu said...

Just turn on the Latin spell-checker and you'll do fine. Or write in English. Take your pick. ;)

 

Post a Comment

<< Home