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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Memo to Microsoft
It's great to be back at Prawfs. I'll take this opportunity for access to a substantial public forum to make a couple of friendly points to the good folks in charge of the Microsoft Word Spell Checker: 1) "Thurgood" is actually a word, the first name of a well known American, so no need to flag it as an error, and 2) it is not a misspelling of the word "Thurmond".
I am a little surprised that at this late date in American history and Microsoft Word (I have Office 2007) the name of the Senator made it into the database, but not that of the great Justice. Or do I only think that Justice Marshall was at least an equally prominent historical figure as Senator Thurmond because I am a lawyer?
Posted by Marc Miller on February 3, 2010 at 10:36 AM | Permalink
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Comments
I wouldn't be surprised if something like that was intentionally hacked in. There are precedents for that kind of thing.
On a side note, I'm surprised that we haven't seen one or more of the big newspapers (e.g. the New York Times) or big law firms (Skadden Arps perhaps) license their in house spelling check dictionary to Microsoft. The dictionary is one of the weaker parts of the Microsoft Office suite, and it is time consuming to bring up to a tolerable level word by word as you use it. Both firms are not enjoying particularly happy economic times and could use a new revenue stream.
Posted by: ohwilleke | Feb 3, 2010 3:10:05 PM
Thurgood is a first name he created himself having been born Thoroughgood. He was probably the first person to have the name, which today would be shared only with those named after him. Thurmond is a last name and a town and therefore may have entered through a Geographical Dictionary rather than any biographical judgement. "Strom Marshall" for example also flags a spelling error only on the first name.
Posted by: Howard Gilbert | Feb 3, 2010 12:27:32 PM
Is the assumption that words make it into SpellChecker based upon a subjective assessment of the prominence of the person (and perhaps even an assessment of their relative merit)? That would surprise me. If you google "Thurmond" and "Thurgood" you will find that, at least in terms of search results, the former word is simply more common than the latter.
Posted by: Thurgood Thurmond | Feb 3, 2010 11:29:07 AM
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