BS: The spell-checker name game

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 08:43 PM

lol!

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 06:52 PM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Genie
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 05:47 PM

Well, at least Spellchecker recognizes "Mudcat" as a word.

Genie

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 05:40 PM

What is mudcat?

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Genie
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 07:57 PM

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,
My dad is a retired preacher, and he's been typing up many of his old sermons. You can probably imagine what Spellchecker does to Biblical names--e.g., Hosea, Titus, Ezekiel, Galatians, etc.--and words from the King James variety of English--e.g., suffereth, doth, hath, etc.! If you set it to auto-correct, you could come up with some pretty funny documents!

Genie

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 09:19 AM

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!

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: technission
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 09:12 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 02:13 AM

Genie, (Amos!), I just saw this..... oh dear.... my pants.... where are my rubber pants....

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 02:08 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 01:32 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Blackcatter
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 12:29 AM

The late Pagan writer Scott Cunningham always came up as "cunninglingus" in PageMaker.

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Sorcha
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 11:38 PM

Weird--my spell check only highlights questionable things--I have the option of changing or ingnoring......I usually ignore.

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Amos
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 11:15 PM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Genie
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 10:14 PM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: RoyH (Burl)
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 08:17 AM

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.

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: JulieF
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 07:38 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 04:06 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 12:21 AM

Mark.

How about "Rabbi Burns" in a recent porcine thread?

Aloha ehoa, pehana?

Sam

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 11:32 PM

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 10:33 PM

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
"Rodent" (Barry Rhodes) was Barmy Roads
Innes Dunston became Inner Dustbin
Myself (Sam Sampson) was appropriately Same Simpleton

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

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 10:11 PM

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...

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: SINSULL
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 10:06 PM

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.

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 07:30 PM

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.)

Subject: RE: BS: The spell-checker name game
From: SINSULL
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 07:16 PM

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?

Subject: The spell-checker name game
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 07:09 PM

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
Perry Como became Perky Comma
Zsa Zsa Gabor became USA USA Gabber
Charlton Heston became Charlatan Festoon
Don Rickles became Don Reckless