Google Docs has updated its spell checker. Sure, in theory that’s a “what could be more boring” scenario. But you guys, it’s pretty awesome.
The updated spell checking bakes in the power of Google’s “Did you mean” technology, meaning that instead of relying on a static dictionary, it uses the context of your word alongside Google’s powerful suggestions database to learn new words, offers spelling corrections based on context rather than just similarity, and can even catch typos when the misspelled word is also a dictionary word. Here are the advantages as spelled out by the Google Docs blog:
- Suggestions are contextual. For example, the spell checker is now smart enough to know what you mean if you type “Icland is an icland.” [and corrects to “Iceland is an island”]
- Contextual suggestions are made even if the misspelled word is in the dictionary. If you write “Let’s meat tomorrow morning for coffee” you’ll see a suggestion to change “meat” to “meet.”
- Suggestions are constantly evolving. As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they’ll automatically be included in our spell checker-even pop culture terms, like Skrillex.
You may still not care, but you’d be nuts not to think this is an awesome technology.
Spell checking powered by the web [Google Docs Blog]
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