#spellcheck /

[alexanderwales]

How has Google Docs spellcheck gotten so bad? What are they doing over there?

Like, okay, they've done a gung ho switchover to "AI-assisted" spellcheck. Sure, fine, stupid but I get it, they're throwing money into Gemini or whatever, they want it to pay off, they're maybe trying to train it more.

But what fresh hell is this?

There's no word "hulkling". If you google the word, you get a Marvel character. If you google "hulking" then it gives you a definition from the dictionary. Google doesn't show you the number of results anymore, but I have to believe that "hulking" is entire orders of magnitude more common. If you enter both words into google's n-gram viewer, "hulkling" doesn't even get recognized.

So I have two theories.

Theory 1 is that their model just sucks ass. It's dog shit. It's suggesting a very uncommon non-word to replace a real word because ... well, maybe the model was trained wrong as a joke, maybe it's not the model per se but the criteria they're using to determine whether a word shows up as incorrect, I don't know.

Theory 2 is that this is a way of gaining more data. In theory, you can gain data not just from scraping millions of documents, but from suggesting words to people and having them say yes or no to the suggestion. But this would be such a low value candidate. If they're using spellcheck to refine their model (rather than good-faith effort to add value to their product) then they're doing a terrible job.

Theory 3 is that Goodhart's Law is in play somewhere. Someone got some incentive to have people interact with the spellchecker, and one way to do that is to just have the spellchecker throw out all kinds of shit. This seems unlikely to me, but you never know.

I just cannot understand the sheer level of incompetence and self-sabotage a company needs to be engaging in to have a publicly-facing product that works this poorly.

It really is seeming like now is the time to jump ship and start using something else to write with, but I have millions of words in GDocs right now, and it's super convenient for sharing with people, so I don't know.

[marlynnofmany]

*cracks knuckles and opens spellcheck on the cyberpunk story with the air of someone going to war*

[ilikelookingatthings]

Anyone ever write so much in a comment and then got immediately embarrassed as soon as you pressed send?

like......I wrote 4 comments because I hit the character limit 3 times. Sent them back to back so the author knows they are suppoused to be together.

But then I felt this wash of embarrassment roll over me like a wave cuz it might be a bit much you know? I write large comments pretty regularly.....but 4? In one go?

I'm not deleting them cuz I spelled checked the comments and it took a while....but a small part of me is hoping the author doesn't see it?

Like I praised the chapter ALOT obviously. I favorited it abd WILL be rereading when I have time. But I also went on specific tangents about alternative routes or why one thing made me feel a certain way and why and what it made me think of.

What if they took it as critism or it makws them doubt what they wrote?! Did I put in enough compliments so they understand i love it as is?! DID I PUT IN TOO MANY THAT IT MIGHT SEEM INSINCERE?!

What if they just see the giant comments and assume it's bad without reading it?

Normally I'm pretty chill. I've mostly toned myself down a bit or double checked my wording just in case. But I'm not going to know til they've read the comment.....but what if they do and it's a bad reaction?

What if it puts pressure that something they wrote for fun got me analyzing it?!

And what if they read it just before I delete it and then think I don't like it anymore?!

The self consciousness hit like a brick to the face!

Anyone else understand the feeling?

[jhsharman]

"quite a spell"

New set up for a new punchline. To be sure, it is not naturalistic -- Greg's new question is not anything that rolls smoothly off the tongue.

[mallleus]

🚨attention fanfic writers🚨

Please know the difference between ‘Message’ and ‘massage’.

Message

Massage

Because if you don’t AT LEAST spell check those two words then it’ll quickly turn this fluff into a N$FW,

“ late night messages”

[marlinspirkhall]

how ironic

[ID] The word unrecognizability has been underscored in red. An error message says Unrecognised Word. This word is potentially misspelt. If not misspelt, you can turn off correcting this word using the kebab menu. [End ID]

[zwoelffarben]

Ya know, nanowrimo arguing that 'AI writing is okay because itsa just like using spellcheck' is especially funny (derogatory) to me specifically, who has gone to great lengths to turn spellcheque off in every program I can fuckin' manage, and been annoyed that some programs simply don't let me (guess who doesn't use those programs anymore if it can be avoided).

Yeah, lets say AI is like spellcheque. It's not, but I'll indulge the wrogn idea like a kindergartner playing pretend at recess wit a notorious play-pretend cheatee-head: I still not fidna use it and I ain't think other people should use it neither.

I think spellcheckers are bad and don't much care for 'em at all. I think our society's obsession wit spelling tings 'correctly' is silly (serious) and we should all go back to pre-dictionary way of doing things where approximate were good enough (I'm only just barely joking about that).

The convention of writers following their ear was better (in some ways) compared to the system of standardized spellings we have today: Ennui? Bah! Onwee. Are the cowardly knight's knobbly knees knacking? Better proknunce the k-fucking K.

It worked fine for them, it works fine for me. If I really need to spell a particular word correctly, I have a paper and ink dictionary and a search engine. Am I significantly romantisizing le past to make my point? Yes, the other way of doing tings was had it's own problems which I'm pointedly ignoring.

But, I still maintain that spellcheck is ceteris paribus bad and new writers should just, turn the fucking thing off. It encourages you to criticize your writing during the drafting stage and worry about what words you know how to spell instead of focusing on what words you know how to use. There were, before I turned it off, a gross number of times I used a less correct word for my writing because I couldn't figure how ta spell the correct one and I wanted the red squiggly line which made my brain itch to just k-fucking GO AWAY.

Wit spellcheque off, I can fuckin breith as I type and just focus on making my point instead of articulating it to merriam-webster (or any dictionary put toward the purpose)'s standard. Spellcheck is a horrid plague on writing, and it's saxors in comparison to the absolute 'rona of a sickness that the industrial plagaarism machine's protless hokum and coughing balderdash.

Fuck 'em both, but to be crystal fuckin' clear about it: k-fuck "AI" more.

[ceilidhtransing]

My life changed so much for the better when I discovered you can actually turn off the red-underlining spellcheck and the green-underlining grammar checker in Microsoft Word.

The amount of time I used to spend manually right-clicking underlined words and going "Add to dictionary" or "Ignore rule", oh my god. (Especially given that Word's judgement for what apparently constitutes incorrect grammar is horrendously oversensitive.)

But it turns out it's possible to just! Turn it off! And then you'll never see those ugly red and green squiggly lines ever again! You can type in peace and leave it up to yourself to check for spelling or grammar issues rather than having Word throw danger signals at you every four sentences.

[oldinterneticons]

Stupid spellcheck

[greencheekconure27]

Non-native speaker opinion: English would be so much less confusing if you just wrote all compound nouns attached like a normal Germanic language.

Unfortunately it would also make it somewhat less funny. (Road works ahead, apartment complex, etc.etc.)

(on the other hand- my Dutch spellcheck once tried to turn a text about art collections into a found family fic by turning "zijn vaders collectie" into "zijn vaderscollectie" (his father's collection-> his collection of fathers. 😂) And no that's not a real word as far as I know. )

[random-jot]

'flip horizontal' is like spellcheck for artists, except for when spellcheck tells me I'm wrong I'm like "no, you idiot, I know I'm right here, shut up," but 'flip horizontal' will show me I made a mistake and then I'll be like "...goddamnit. you're right. but i will be pretending I don't see it."

[parasite-core]

Speaking of spellcheck being crap nowadays, I just wrote that someone was ‘singed’ and spellcheck tried to tell me to change it to sung. No, spellcheck, ‘he was badly sung’ does not make more sense in this context, thanks anyways.

[frilledshark-enthusiast]

the most embarrassing thing just happened to me I think I just hit internet rock bottom

Luckily they were fine with it and maybe they’ll get a good laugh when they see my comment but holy shit.

[deep-spacediver577]

My phone must hate me... Because no matter how many updates, the spell check has it in for me.

[hannah-heartstrings]

Can someone explain what Word is even talking about?

'Cause I can't.