Spell check has helped completely change the way we compose documents and write things. Before computers, we had typewriters and just plain old writing. When computers came along with word processing, there was a need for a system that would automatically check spelling and find errors in the text. It's closely related to grammar check, but that's a whole different story...
The first time I learned about spell check was maybe 6 to 8 years ago, when I first really started using a computer. I was typing (or rather hunt-and-pecking) a Word document for school and noticed a red squiggly line under a word. I went and asked my parents about it. They told me that thw word was spelled wrong and that I needed to right-click it to select the correct spelling. I eventually found it to be a very useful feature in computers and a valuable alternative to writing.
Spell check is integrated into the specific operating system, rather than a single program. For example, you can spell a word wrong in Microsoft Word or Firefox, and it will catch you the exact same way, because the dictionary it is going by is a part of Windows. All modern operating systems have this, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, and the Blackberry OS. The catch is that not all operating systems have the same dictionary. I can type iPod in here on Windows, and a red squiggly line appears. Type it in on iOS (an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad) and it will say it is correct. Infact, if I were to type in into iOS as ipod, it would change it to iPod. In the way that Apple incorperates their own devices and products into their customized dictionaries, Microsoft, for some reaon, does not. I can type Zune (Microsoft's mp3 player) in here, and even though I am running Windows, it is apparently misspelled. It claims it is Zuni. What is that?
I was thinking about writing this blog post and thought about the person or team that was responsible for typing in, or somehow compiling a list of all the words in the English language to be used in computer spell check. There had to be some point at which it had to be entered digitally. I am sure it was broken up between a large number of people to enter everything in, but still, someone had to sit there for hours typing in words, definitions, parts of speech, and correct usages of a large inventory of words.
I also feel bad for the person or group that had to come up with the way in which computers determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct. The English language is so confusing and logically makes so little sense that it is almost impossible to create a set way for the computer to determine if something is grammatically correct. It's almost as if that had to just create a list of correct sentences and incorrect sentences. I could never sream of overcoming this problem, and I am not surprised that occasionally I type a sentence that my grammar check thinks is incorrect, when in fact there is nothing wrong with it.
I think there is a negative (yet perhaps minor) effect of spell check on people in general. It is slowly degrading people's ability to spell correctly, and one day we will have no idea how to spell correctly. I think eventually the need to spell will become useless, as we will have voice recognition and text-to-speech at our fingertips. That day will be sad.
