h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Excellent entry Alex - I really like this!

Page turner (not spell checked)

Entry: Spell Checkers - A Warning - A51397383
Author: Alex Tufty Ashman [!] - U566116

Since you asked:

>>One exception to the above is those wonderful moments<< - there's a mix-up of singular and plural here.

Ok, I've changed that bit - does it read better now?

Much better.

What about your opening quote? Is >>A man ...need... some sort of poetic speach, or some old form?

It's 'he needs to attend to spelling', but 'he does not need attend to spelling', and 'need not' is related to the latter. Weird, huh?

Oh and besides, it's a quote.

I guess it's the translation of a quote, so could be wrong (apart from the fact that you might have made a mistake while typing it).

Sorry to put this here Alex; but I don't have your e-mail addy. By pure chance, I received it this morning from a friend:-

I'M ONE OF THE 55 ARE YOU?
Don't even think about using spell check!!!!!!!!




Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod a s a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can raed tihs forwrad it.

ONLY FORWARD IF YOU CAN READ THIS

Scorp

I remember hearing about that a while ago. Odd, isn't it?

Excellent

You don't mention the fact that words rejected by the spell checker can be added to the dictionary (and thus get rid of the squiggly line). This is good and bad. It's good if you are improving the vocabulary of your dictionary. It's bad if you're only tired of being constantly corrected for a word that you 'know' you're spelling correctly. Here's an example of the latter. Our village clerk types up the agenda for town meetings and always notes that 'items marked with an asterick are for the consent agenda'

I mentioned to her once that 'asterick' is wrongly spelled, but she insisted that it was in the dictionary. I asked her which one, and she pointed to her computer. Apparently her predecessor had done this mischief.


Also, to veer off-topic, I have this idea that our disastrous Mars landing was caused by some bright programmer deciding that it would be good to have a 'units' checker complete with conversions incorporated into the software, and modified a spell checker for the purpose.

Anyway - your entry is terrific fun to read. If you're a pedant.

()

I've added a note about 'adding' words.

In earlier versions of Microsoft word it was fairly easy to tell it whether the spell checker should look for US or UK spelling.
the latest version is so complex it does all my documents in UK spelling even though I live in Michigan,USA
I remember trying to set one document for hootoo to UK spelling and it decided that this was to be default for all my documents

Egg sill ant peace!

You've even managed a link to Luxembourg

Well, it's about the same size as Luxembourg, so I thought the two ought to be twinned.

This is a great Entry which causes one to reflect on their use of it and their own writing. I don't have any bad things to say about it.

I think this starts out promisingly - I particularly like the first nonsense sentence - but gets more serious as you go on. It feels as if it was a struggle to write.

But this was a particularly fiendish challenge.

The study mentioned in 'But I like it' seems to repeat some of the things you said earlier.

"It feels as if it was a struggle to write."

Nope, I had the keyboard right in front of me for this one.

I forgot to mention: the latest Stretcher is out now A51933099