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04 Jun 01 - 07:09 PM (#476326) Subject: The spell-checker name game From: Jim Dixon Here's a little pastime for people with a computer and too much time on their hands. Get a list of famous people or people you know. Run it through your spell-checker. When the spell-checker finds a word that's not in its dictionary -- which will happen for most proper names -- accept one of the alternative spellings the program suggests. Occasionally, if you're lucky, the results will be amusing. I happened to have a list of elderly (or recently dead) entertainers. Here's what I got:
Ernest Borgnine became Ernest Boringness |
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04 Jun 01 - 07:16 PM (#476335) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: SINSULL Jim, I have contacted Spaw. He is arranging a bed for you at the Neil Young Center For The Terminally Screwed. Would you prefer a window seat? |
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04 Jun 01 - 07:30 PM (#476341) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Jim Dixon Sinsull, choose your weapons: Spaw = Spew, Spawn, Spam, Spat, Spay. Sinsull = Sinful, Sinus (I wanted to keep this from getting personal but you leave me no choice.) |
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04 Jun 01 - 10:06 PM (#476472) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: SINSULL You're right Jim. The room with no windows is best for now. The nice soft walls will be soothing. And we will even check you in as Jiminey Dixie Cup, if it will make you happy. |
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04 Jun 01 - 10:11 PM (#476474) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: McGrath of Harlow At work one time we tried that on our names. I came out as Coffin Mattress. The head of the department, who was called Mike Leadbetter (no relation) came out as Macho Wildebeest. These spell checkers are weird lot... |
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04 Jun 01 - 10:33 PM (#476493) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Billy the Bus Jim, You take me back a dcade (or more), when I was checking out every shareware text editor I could find. I had a regular "name game" section in my local Lions Club Bulletin - spell check versions of members' names. There's a few which still spring to mind.
My old mate "Fatty" (Ron Dennis) became Round Dennims The classic, however, was our local Anglican Minister (female). Reverend Airdry Dyson-Leask became Revered Artery Doesn't Leak - I'd hope not!....;) In a slightly more serious vein - I used to get off-colour - in those days, almost all spell-checks spoke US as opposed to UK "English" - so I sent very few cheques off to the program authors...;^) In addition they all choked on Maori placenames and words, which I use regularly. In desperation, I finally twigged on the idea of using the "user dictionary" of my favourite text editor (NoteTab) as a word-list to throw through any new spell-check I'm checking out. Just hit "learn word" at each hiccup. Finally, there's a very delicate balance in the number of words which one's spelling checker should accept. There's just so much delightful ambigiuity of spelling, meaning, pronunciation, etc in our cranky "English" language, that total confusion and hilarity can result if all "acceptable" versions of words are accepted by your spelling checker. I often use a freeware OCR program(me) (Wocar), written by a French guy. It's great, but Cyril Cambien, the author, seems to have grabbed every "English" word-list he could find to feed into the dictionary. It accepts words with archa(e)ic spellings, those from many scientific (and other) disciplines etc. - then, translates what it "reads" from the page, and "accepts" some strange words - some I've never heard of. Output of "basic English" text scanned in can end up highly esoteric. Careful proofreading is needed. Ain't the "English" language grand - especially when combined with a spell-check. I'll check-in later, but don't expect me to pay at the cheque-out..;) In the meantime, I'll keep proof-reading - at the moment 87.5% proof whisky...;) Sam
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04 Jun 01 - 11:32 PM (#476521) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Mark Cohen Another side of the spell-checker story is one that Sam alluded to: a spell-checker is NOT the same as a proofreader, and will pass a word that's incorrect, as long as it's a real word. As I seem to have a congenital disability consisting of an automatic proofreader permanently hardwired into my visual cortex, I'm always amused to see those goofs in print. The first one I noticed was back in the dark ages of 1986 or so, in a medical journal (Pediatrics). One of the "filler" quotations at the end of an article was attributed to a medieval Jewish sage: Rabbit Tarfon! Aloha, Mark |
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05 Jun 01 - 12:21 AM (#476542) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Billy the Bus Mark. How about "Rabbi Burns" in a recent porcine thread? Aloha ehoa, pehana? Sam |
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05 Jun 01 - 04:06 AM (#476597) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Dave the Gnome Geoff Higginbottom who was on at our club last night - Spulling chocker gave up on his surname but the he came out as 'Goof'. Best we saw though in a local paper was 'Gerroff Higginbottom'. A Lancashire dialect checker? DtG |
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05 Jun 01 - 07:38 AM (#476662) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: JulieF We have a software from a company call Fretwell Downing, the suggestions include frighful,fretfull,fearful -sometimes thay all seem right. All the best julie |
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05 Jun 01 - 08:17 AM (#476681) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: RoyH (Burl) A while ago I was writing an article that mentioned the name of Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp's associate in Appalachian collecting days. The spell checker came up with 'Mad Carpools', giving a mental image that kept me laughing for hours. |
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04 Apr 02 - 10:14 PM (#683353) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Genie I tried a few Mudcat names [and a few famous ones] just now, and here's what I came up with: Jeanene [my name] became "Guanine" Amos Jessup became "Amok Jesus" Sorcha became "Sortie" Pene Azul became "Pee Azalea" Mark Cohen became "Mark Coven" Kendall became "kindle," "kneaded," or "candela" Bob Dylan became "Bob Delay" Joan Baez became "Joan Baize" MMario became "Marie" Susan Hinton, spellcheck changed you to "Susan Hilton" (You're rich, girl!) spellcheck didn't know what to do with "dharmabum," "Katlaughing" or "WYSIWYG!" Genie |
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04 Apr 02 - 11:15 PM (#683358) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Amos Gosh, Genie -- I think you'll get some folks around here to confirm that choice!! I think we used to play games like this when we were in grade school, making it up ourselves, didn't we? I vagely remember ... but I'm sure it is more fun with a spellchecker!! :>) A |
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04 Apr 02 - 11:38 PM (#683379) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Sorcha Weird--my spell check only highlights questionable things--I have the option of changing or ingnoring......I usually ignore. |
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05 Apr 02 - 12:29 AM (#683411) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Blackcatter The late Pagan writer Scott Cunningham always came up as "cunninglingus" in PageMaker. |
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05 Apr 02 - 01:32 AM (#683447) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Coyote Breath The President of the company I retired from is named Arnie Sallaberry (he is of Basque descent). The spell check called him Urine Slobbery. We printed that page and put it on the break room board. He was not amused. CB |
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05 Apr 02 - 02:08 AM (#683453) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Lin in Kansas Years ago, when I worked in a law firm word processing department, we had a bulletin board filled with this kind of stuff. The one that springs to mind was the one that convinced me NEVER to simply accept a "Search and Replace" without making sure it was really doing what you wanted it to do. I did a replace on an S Corporation filing and it changed "publicly held corporation" to, you guessed it, "pubicly held corporation," which gave a whole new meaning to "closely held stock"! Unfortunately, that actually got filed, so somewhere in Olympia, Washington, there's an officially formed corporation that's pubicly held. NEVER trust a spell-checker. NEVER do an unattended Search and Replace, either. I was in hot water for some time over that one... Lin |
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06 Apr 02 - 02:13 AM (#684337) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: wysiwyg Genie, (Amos!), I just saw this..... oh dear.... my pants.... where are my rubber pants.... ~S~ |
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06 Apr 02 - 09:12 AM (#684457) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: technission I know I once saw a humorous example of a nonsense sentence that was "passed" by a spell-checker because all the words were correctly spelled; they were just inappropriate and/or meaningless by context. Does anybody have some examples to share? Disparately peaking gaffes, michael |
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06 Apr 02 - 09:19 AM (#684459) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: DMcG See the Pseudobabble 101 thread - I bet most of the 'published papers' got through the spelling checker. My worst ever experience of this kind was the first major paper I produced in my first job. In the management summary my final recommendation was that something 'now be done' but it was mistyped as 'not be done', thus reversing the entire paper. Of course, the board only paid attention to the management summary and that was that - sixth months work lost forever!
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06 Apr 02 - 07:57 PM (#684727) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Genie I don't know if it's human or computer error, but every so often a company that has been spelling my name right for years --e.g., my credit card and utility companies--starts misspelling my name. Does Spellchecker tell it that "Jeanene" should be "Jeanine" or some other spelling? Or is some cublicle worker who's being over diligent [and presumptuous]. I say it can be simple human presumptuousness, because years ago, before desktop computers, when I gave my dissertation to my ["expert"] typist for the final manuscript, she took it upon herself to change a key word --"predication" [or "predicated"]-- to "prediction" [or "predicted] all the way through the whole document. In those days, this meant having to re-type most of the manuscript, or at least most pages containing that word. [The University did not accept pages that looked like they had been corrected.] The typist did not want to take responsibility for having made that error by assuming something instead of checking with me.
Susan, Genie |
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07 Apr 02 - 05:40 PM (#685132) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: GUEST What is mudcat? |
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07 Apr 02 - 05:47 PM (#685135) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Genie Well, at least Spellchecker recognizes "Mudcat" as a word. Genie |
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07 Apr 02 - 06:52 PM (#685167) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: Tattie Bogle Recent e-mail from our Health Board was complaining that in this day and age of spell-checkers there was no excuse for mistakes in spelling and GRAMMER (sic) in official documents! Tattie B |
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07 Apr 02 - 08:43 PM (#685215) Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game From: wysiwyg lol! |