Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Don't put too much trust in software.  Spell-checkers, for instance, have about 40,000 words in their dictionary.  It's not it's difficult to code one with 250,000 words, but if you do that, words that are, in fact, common words spelt wrong are thought by the software to be obscure words splt correctly.  And it's pretty rare that software can determine whether you're using your where you should be using your, and NONE of them know whether you're using it's as a contraction or a possessive.

They will, however, flag common typos like teh instead of the, things that the eye tend to skip over.  They aren't altogether useless, but you have to be careful and not trust them too far.

Gotta wonder if the people who wrote that code ever consulted a language expert?

Yes. Donald Knuth is his name, and if you need him, you can get him, but he's 78 and you better have a good question, one that isn't covered in his books.

There's nothing worth knowing about spell-checkers and grammar analysers that isn't in The Art of Comuter Programming.  It's a 5-volume work, of which on;y three were published by the early 1990s.  A fourth was published in 2005, and the 5th will surely never see the light of day.  Lotsa pages, tiny print, and read it carefully, because it's information-dense.  I know of no programmer who's been exposed to the books who wasn't impressed by them.  Amazon charges $175.  Programmers who claim to understand everything Knuth wrote about *anything* can generally write their own ticket.  They are much in demand.