Re: Was "Spelling & Grammarchecker Use Survey"

["Guy K. Haas" <ghaas -at- selectica -dot- com>]

joanne grey wrote:
> 
> Brad Mehlenbacher wrote:
> 
> > *This survey is for Microsoft Word users*
> 
> Going back a few years, but here is one of my favorite silly stories.
   . . .
 
> In writing a User's Guide for a wonderful piece of (now obsolete)
> software, I was defining all the customization options available. These
> were accessed via a series of property sheets.  Unfortunately, that day
> my brain was faster than my fingers, and I typed "property sheep"
> instead.
> 
> Since "sheep" is a legitimate word, the spell checker sailed right past
> it. So did the three reviewers.
> 
> Thank goodness the final reviewer caught it and was quite curious about
> how you would open one of "them thar property sheeps".
> 
> It was after that that I began using spell checkers as just one tool and
> not relying on them too much. I also took "form" and "from" out of the
> dictionary, so that it can't find them and checks with me for those,
> too.   

Word at least provides that ability.  Last I heard, there was no way 
to remove a word from the base dictionary provided with FrameMaker.
In object-oriented programming, there is a concept of names being
private or public (among others), and the spell checker would never 
notice if you type "pubic" in place of "public."

--Guy K. Haas
  Senior Technical Writer 
  Selectica, Inc.
  E-Mail: ghaas -at- selectica -dot- com
  Internet: www.selectica.com   
  Phone: (408) 545-2514   Fax: (408) 570-2167