Spell checking
Posted: 2015-05-29 09:11:55
I am not a big user of spell checking, but I was fooling around with things, and I tried spell checking all the permutations of various words, and I come up with results that I don't really understand. Just to be clear what I'm talking about, consider the word cat. The permutations of cat are:
act atc cat cta tac tca
And spell checking "reasonably" flags "atc", "cta" and "tca" as misspelled, and lets the rest pass. Okay. (What is "tac"?)
Now comes the weird part. If I try the permutations of "please", the following list seems to pass muster with the spell checker:
slapee spelea asleep aspeel asplee apsele apeles elapse laspee leespa palese palees pesale peales pelase peleas please
"Please", "asleep" and "elapse" are fine of course, and "slapee" might be useful in a legal context, but do people recognise any of those other "words"? But things get weirder. I tried "highlight" (which has 15,120 permutations) and the following list passes the spell check test:
highlight lhtghihig lighthigh glghhihit ggiitlhhh gihhgtihl ihgtihghl ihgihlthg
Really?
I tried quite a few other words at random and I get lots of similar results. I guess I'll continue to rely on the human version.
I wish a happy glghhihit to everyone!
act atc cat cta tac tca
And spell checking "reasonably" flags "atc", "cta" and "tca" as misspelled, and lets the rest pass. Okay. (What is "tac"?)
Now comes the weird part. If I try the permutations of "please", the following list seems to pass muster with the spell checker:
slapee spelea asleep aspeel asplee apsele apeles elapse laspee leespa palese palees pesale peales pelase peleas please
"Please", "asleep" and "elapse" are fine of course, and "slapee" might be useful in a legal context, but do people recognise any of those other "words"? But things get weirder. I tried "highlight" (which has 15,120 permutations) and the following list passes the spell check test:
highlight lhtghihig lighthigh glghhihit ggiitlhhh gihhgtihl ihgtihghl ihgihlthg
Really?
I tried quite a few other words at random and I get lots of similar results. I guess I'll continue to rely on the human version.
I wish a happy glghhihit to everyone!