Why Spell Check Can't Be Trusted And What Should Be Done

While writing my post about what to do with draft blog posts, I typed in the word “repurposed” into the editor and the spell checker in Firefox highlighted it as being incorrectly spelled (it’s doing it now as I write this post).

It offered me the options of “re purposed” or “re-purposed”. The spell checker built into the WordPress editing panel also offered me the same alternatives.

I know how to spell “repurposed” and a quick Google supported it so I just ignored it and continued on with the post. Yet, I am sure that the vast majority of people will either not bother to question the suggested alternatives and go with the one that “looks” correct or simply not spell check their posts at all.

When I questioned the results offered by the spell checker I, as I’m sure most of people who question the results do, typed the word into Google and compared the results. Unfortunately as more and more people accept the spell checker version, more and more results online will reflect that spelling and it will appear in the Google results as if the incorrect spelling is in fact the correct version.

Over time this will lead to the incorrect version becoming the “normal” and predominantly used version as both the spell checkers and the search engines reinforce that it is correct.

It’s an obvious conclusion then that spell checkers have a great potential to change how we spell words in the English (and any for which they are employed) language.

There’s a lot of responsibility with that. Language and spelling will always evolve but I believe that it is the duty of applications which employ spell checkers and those who maintain such databases to ensure that they are accurate and comprehensive in order to prevent the unnecessary dilution of the language.

I wonder if there is the need for a central spell check database or authority to maintain these databases from which applications like Firefox and platforms such as WordPress can pull  spell check data, as opposed to everyone pulling from different sources.

At least that way there would be one know place to report errors omissions and corrections and perhaps then we could finally start trusting our spell checkers and maybe complete a game of scrabble without a squabble!