A "homonym finder" spell-check feature for word processors. How many times have I spelled the wrong word correctly? A few examples include principal/principle, effect/affect, stationery/stationary, and there/their. It would be very helpful to have a feature that could highlight homonyms throughout a document. Then, I could scan these words and double check that I used the right words. Rolling over a highlighted word would bring up a window with definitions.
I would want to choose whether or not to activate this feature, less every usage of the word "to" be highlighted in all of my work. But for those documents where mistakes are unacceptable -job applications, resumes, published works- this would add great value.
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They plan to have some form of this in the New Edition of Office. It is a great idea. -gk13
I work in IT (specifically data processing) and I can tell you, there are very 'simple' things a software solution will screw. The quest for 'automated reason' the precusor to Artificial Intelligence has been around as far back as the first comp. To answer you, the languages used to write software applications like Office simply CANNOT even come close to achieve a decent original (emphases here) thought or idea. Which would make it the basis of the algorithmn for the simple code necessary to understand there and their for instance. What can be achieved is a copy cat effect on behavioural trends (read word usage) which would involve incompetent coding, ineffecient base and a waste of CPU. Logic tells me to avoid the one product you say is on the way - did you say Office and a feature? This is like promising people that they will grow intelligent by eating omega 3 fatty acids. of course they help. But there is more than just that. The answer to that is you. It is a human being. You can tell the difference; computers can't even this time with a little help!
PS: Don't get me wrong, I also agree that the 'computation power' of the systems nowadays is phenomenal but their ability to distinguish between rational and flawed arguments or logic, reason and AI is still in it's infancy. Blueprinting human patterns has been suggested but has remained just as such - a suggestion. See. a very simple thing you thought a computer could do successfully and cannot. A child fairs much much better here. Computers are good 'processing inputs based on variables, criteria, argument etc then 'returning' possible (note possible) outcome scenarios. Their answers are as correct as our input. If we use the wrong formulae, e.g. because of one reason or the other (maybe a better one has not been discovered) we get garbage. Period. No theories here.
Actually there is a homonym spell checker on the market. You can check it out at www.homonymwordsdictionary.com.
I think you will enjoy this!
Eliminate Homonym Errors For Good
Since their inception, our spell checkers have held us helplessly at bay while they decided to permit the word patience to be used for patients, the word fore for four, hour for our, complacent for complaisant and the list goes on and on. Should this surprise us? After all we named them spell checkers, not context checkers.
As long as the words were spelled correctly, all homonym errors were granted safe passage into our documents regardless of the contextual consequences or distortion of intended meaning.
Microsoft’s Office 2007 makes a restrained attempt to address this problem by putting a squiggly blue line below words that may be improperly used in context. One such word is pear as used in the phrase, a pear of shoes four yore ant. While correctly suggesting pair for pear, Office 2007 turns a blind eye to the words four, yore, and ant which are glaring contextual homonym errors. The phrase should read “a pair of shoes for your aunt”.
Several other companies have produced some excellent spell checkers and word processing products, but their limited approach to such a long standing and serious problem as contextual integrity is at best most disappointing. In spite of the abundance of all this software, we still find ourselves wishing for and sorely needing a contextual homonym checker; one that engages easily with our word processors and complements our spell checkers. It would be unobtrusive while it dutifully verifies each homonym in our documents for contextual integrity. It would be nice too if that elusive software program would replace improperly used homonyms with the correct ones thus allowing us to produce documents without homonym errors.
If you do a Google search on ‘how to eliminate homonym errors’ you will be pleasantly surprised to find that such a program already exists. At the time of this printing your search will take you to the first and second positions on the page. According to the website featured there, more and improved products will be forthcoming.
Are we looking at a rising star, hope on the horizon, a sigh of relief for all of us? Time will tell, but at least it’s refreshing to see that someone has finally looked the homonym error monster directly in the eye and said, ‘No more, enough of you.’http://www.rjentech1.com