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Context-Sensitive Spelling Checker

A spelling checker that examines words and their context to detect potential misspellings instead of using a spelling dictionary.


Date Posted: July 29, 2004
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What is Context-Sensitive Spelling Checker?

Context-Sensitive Spelling Checker (csSpell) is a spelling checker that examines words and their context to detect potential misspellings instead of using a spelling dictionary (the cs in csSpell stands for context sensitive). csSpell can scan plain text files; files that contain non-text elements such as SGML, HTML, or XML tags; and even files that contain program code.

How does it work?

csSpell scans a group of files, analyzes each word in each file, and reports potential inconsistencies. Instead of comparing each word to a list of known words (as dictionary-based spelling checkers do), csSpell compares each word to all the other words in the group of files being scanned. It can therefore identify likely misspellings that dictionary-based spell checkers cannot, such as

  • misspellings of words not listed in any spelling dictionary (for example, product names, product acronyms, and command keywords)
  • misspellings that are correct spellings of a different, unintended word (for example, mange instead of manage)

There are certain types of misspellings that csSpell cannot identify. For example, if a word is consistently misspelled, csSpell will not know to flag it. For this reason, csSpell should be used in addition to, not instead of, a dictionary-based spelling checker.


About the technology author(s):
Andreas Arning works at IBM Germany, doing software development. He joined IBM in 1986, holds a Ph.D. and a Master's degree in Computer Science, and has filed 18 patents.

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Related technologies

For platform(s):
Windows

For topics:
.NET, spelling, language, dictionary


 

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