when chatting using IM I type fairly accurately and I don’t care about the few typos I do make. Meanwhile, some people I chat with apparently care so much that they clutter the thread with fixes. Typically if they misspell the word, they input it again, spelled correctly, and the thread gets cluttered. I don’t like it, but not yet to the point of pitting them
Anyway, so I guess I exemplify potential customer demographic that wants to get rid of typo correction from others whereas my interlocutors exemplify another demographic that want to fix their own typos quickly. However, the above of course doesn’t tell me anything about the larger statistical picture of this potential market - maybe the folks I chat with aren’t a random sample of chatters out there at all.
Well, so suppose there were a magic app on the market that would fix this for your favorite instant messenger. Either fix the problem of misspelling fixes from the other user or (more fancifully, I guess) fix the problem of your own typos. Would you bother paying a few dollars to get that?
No. I’m always amazed about people who correct obvious typos on IM, as though I can’t figure out what they really meant.
IM is quick and dirty, with no real opportunity for proofing, so an occasional typo isn’t an issue (if it’s all typos, of course, then the user needs to learn to spell better).
I usually don’t bother correcting spelling if the conversation is moving at a decent rate. In slower conversation, I am more likely to correct part of my sentance as shown below.
*sentence
This is mostly because I want to make it known that I do know how to spell the word in question. Of course, if the typo has an impact on the meaning of the sentence I correct it if/when I notice it.
It would be interesting to allow correction of typos in IM via some sort of edit function that would have to be present on both machines, but I think that might cause more trouble than it would be worth. Better to make note of the correction than to have it occur above the line you are reading.
I always correct my errors. Just because it’s an IM conversation is no reason not to spell correctly. I wouldn’t pay to have a program do it for me though.
I’m with RealityChuck – typos are inevitable, and not a big deal. I only correct mine if they’re so screwy that you can’t tell what I’m trying to say – and I tell those that I’m chatting with that they don’t need to correct theirs, again, unless meaning gets totally mangled. Corrections just slow things down and draw attention to what’s the written equivalent of a slip of the tongue in casual conversation.
So, no, no interest in such an app, because I don’t care about typos.
Of course, as a couple of people have noted, the people I chat with regularly are all highly literate and don’t have a problem with spelling and grammar. Those who are most in need of such an app (the LOLers and OMGers) are probably the ones who are least concerned about their spelling and grammar in general.
iChat has a built in spell check. Actually pretty much every app I use on OS X checks my spelling as I type. I find it has both helped my spelling immeasurably and left my spelling worse when I’m forced to us Windows. I like to spell correctly at all times but I get so used to seeing a squiggle under my misspellings that I get lazy and don’t watch myself as well as I used to. It’s one of those features on OS X I sorely miss on Windows so I guess you could say I’m willing to pay for it.
Having embedded real-time autocorrect & spell check in the IM client would be useful. I’m thinking of the same functionality that’sin Word & Outlook today. I’m a little surprised it isn’t there already.
Even something about like the *launch spell check on Send * option in Outlook would be useful. In the IM client’s case, it would fire on each {Enter} keystroke.
OTOH, something that sat in the middle and editted my response after I sent it but before you saw it, or that made it easier for people to go back and edit and re-send what they just sent, would be bad.
NETA: But, if it’s really common, it might be nice to have a way to filter out all typo-correction posts. I don’t think actually applying them would be useful at all.
But, then again, a typo fix might actually be important. You’d have to leave in a way to still check. Maybe add an asterisk to their post that you can click on to see what they’ve corrected.
And, of course, this will only work with people who use the * to correct things. And you’ll have to filter out anything that could be an emoticon. So don’t count anything with punctuation marks or only a single letter. And don’t count anything that both starts and ends with *. (e.g. *students should be filtered out, while *:>( and waves should still be shown)
And, for Og’s sake, make sure your program has inline spellcheck. Any program that involves communicating via text that doesn’t have that is woefully deficient in this day and age
All this said, I don’t know if anyone will pay for it. As soon as you get the idea out there, somebody else is going to try and release one for free. About the only place I could see you pulling it off would be on a locked platform like the iP*s (iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad)
Since every instant messenger I’ve used has been free, the idea of paying extra for an add-on doesn’t appeal to me. However, unlike the OP, making a typo bugs me to the point where I do feel the need to correct it. So while I don’t think I’d pay for an app that fixes my typos, I do think there’s a lot of merit to the idea of developing one into an existing instant messenger program.
Just so you know, there are free IM clients out there with built-in or free add on spell checking. So no, I wouldn’t pay for it. It’s free for me because I use pidgin.
