I was just typing a message to a friend on Facebook, and I’m not sure if it is a browser widget that is spell-checking for me, or if the site itself has a spell check.
Either way, I find that very interesting.
George Bush
Ronald Regan
Dan Quayle
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Al Gore…
These all pass with no little red underline.
Al Sharpton passes on the Al but is dinged on the Sharpton.
I’m not necessarily pitting anything. I just think this is an indicator of the extra challenges that I hope do not bog down Obama’s administration.
You did spell Barack wrong in the thread title, though my Firefox is also redlining the correct spelling. I just added it to my dictionary. Problem solved.
They’re all pretty common names. Barack Obama isn’t, and I don’t know anyone else with either that given or last name. So you add it manually. I’m not sure what the issue is or why it’s in the Pit. My own name, which is far more common than Obama’s, also got redlined until I added it. So what?
It’s Firefox. My guess is that they get their dictionary from someone else, and will pick this up as soon as their provider updates. If you want to see it expedited, file a bug report.
So I didn’t put “(mild)” in my title. And yeah my typing is not always perfect (indicating that perhaps I actually use the service in question?), and no I’m not worked up. I think it is strange. I think it is a glaring oversight, in this day and age, on the part of whoever maintains the code.
It doesn’t have “Microsoft”, “Google”, “Facebook” or indeed even “Firefox” in it, either. Spell checkers tend not to have any but the most common proper nouns, and not always those. This isn’t even eyebrow-raising, let alone a “glaring oversight.” I’m more surprised that they do have Quayle than I am that they don’t have Obama.
‘Hillary’ still looks wrong to me: all the Hilarys I know spell it with one L.
Word still doesn’t accept ‘internet’ with a lower case i, and didn’t like ‘website’ until relatively recently.
Indeed. If I have to type ‘Hotmail’ into an email I’m composing in Hotmail - I get squiggled.
It’s not like many software manufacturers release little dictionary updates for everyone to download every time some person or concept represented by proper nouns reaches a certain level of noteworthiness. If this sort of thing is updated, it’ll probably be so en masse in a major version release.
Ok, I am guilty of a momentary lapse of perspective. But it would be nice if such services were, say, tied to the same degree of accuracy/suggestions as search results. Ya know?
If the accuracy of the spelling database was tied to money in some way, it would be. Is there any revenue associated with the spelling dictionaries like there is to search results?
Not that many - the name went out of fashion in the UK, but the ones I did know (female) spelled it with one L. The double L appears to be more common in the US.
The only male Hilarys I know of are this chap:Hilary Hook - Wikipedia - I met him while working on UK local radio in the 1980s - and British environment minister Hilary Benn.
