Word 2007 Takes a Spelling Test

The spell checker in Microsoft Word 2007 readily finds misspellings that don't match a word in its dictionary, for instance, bhalt or pleepoid. Spelling mistakes are harder to detect when a properly spelled word appears in the wrong place, a malapropism. These errors only become apparent when the word turns a sentence or phrase into nonsense.

Word uses a contextual spelling corrector to find malapropisms, but it's not perfect. The software figures out that chef executive officer should really be chief executive officer but it misses that voice president ought to be vice president.

When Word 2007's contextual spell-checker is turned on, (Office Button > Word Options > Proofing > check "Use contextual spelling" then click OK) the program flags malapropisms with a wavy blue underline. Right-clicking on the underlined word reveals Word's suggested corrections.

To find out how good Word 2007 is at finding malapropisms, a University of Toronto study gave the program a spelling test.

The research involved feeding the word processor 500 articles from the Wall Street Journal newspaper. The articles had been spiked with 1300 malapropisms. A letter was simply swapped or added to an existing word to create a new word. For example, "share" was changed to sharp, shave, shame, shape or shark, to make sentences nonsensical.

How Well Word Can Spell

The test results showed that Word 2007 missed most of the mistakes. The contextual spelling corrector found just one-quarter of the deliberately misused words.

When Word did identify an error, it was usually accurate and underlined only 11 words that weren't malapropisms. Word was also good at offering the right replacement word to correct a mistake.

For instance, Word 2007 found and corrected:

Peter Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer, said, "The quarterly results highlight the diversity and strength of our revenge [revenue] stream."

But Word didn't detect:

"We have been conducting a review of customer accounts and to the best of our knowledge customers have not lost monkey [money]," the spokesman said.

The study concludes that Microsoft's contextual spelling corrector for Word 2007 is "cautious", failing to find most errors. But when the program does flag a possible error, it's almost always right, making the system "believable".