Correction of misspelled words

• US 7,207,004 B1
• Filed: 07/23/2004
• Issued: 04/17/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/23/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Paul A. Harrity
• Original Assignee: Paul A. Harrity
• Inventors: Harrity, Paul A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Huynh; Cong-Lac
• Application Number:
  US10/896,951
• Time in Patent Office: 998 Days
• Field of Search: 715/500, 715/532, 715/533
• US Class Current: 715/236
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/232 Orthographic correction, e.g. spell checking or vowelisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/242 Dictionaries

Abstract

A method includes identifying a document corpus, creating a dictionary based on words in the document corpus, identifying a potentially misspelled word in a document, and providing a word from the dictionary as likely to correspond to the potentially misspelled word.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium that stores instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for checking spelling of a document opened, created, or modified by a software application, comprising:

instructions for providing a first dictionary associated with the software application;

instructions for identifying a document corpus;

instructions for creating a second dictionary based on words in the document corpus;

instructions for identifying a potentially misspelled word in the document opened, created, or modified by the software application as a word that does not match any word in the first dictionary;

instructions for determining whether the potentially misspelled word matches a word in the second dictionary, where the match is determined when the word in the second dictionary occurs at least a threshold number of times in the document corpus or in a document in the document corpus;

instructions for providing a word from the second dictionary as likely to correspond to the potentially misspelled word when no word in the second dictionary matches the potentially misspelled word; and

instructions for one of visually marking the potentially misspelled word in the document as matching in the second dictionary or treating the potentially misspelled word as correctly spelled when the potentially misspelled word matches a word in the second dictionary.

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for identifying the document corpus include instructions for presenting a user interface to a user to permit the user to select one or more documents to include in the document corpus.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for creating the second dictionary include instructions for generating the second dictionary after opening the document using the software application.

4. A computer-readable storage medium that stores instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for checking spelling of a document opened, created, or modified by a software application, comprising:

instructions for creating a dictionary based on words in a document corpus;

instructions for identifying a potentially misspelled word in the document opened, created, or modified by the software application;

instructions for providing a word from the dictionary as likely to correspond to the potentially misspelled word when no word in the dictionary matches the potentially misspelled word; and

instructions for designating the potentially misspelled word as matching in the dictionary when the potentially misspelled word matches a word in the dictionary, where the match is determined when the word in the dictionary occurs at least a threshold number of times in the document corpus or in a document in the document corpus.

5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, further comprising:

instructions for providing another dictionary associated with the software application; and

instructions for identifying potentially misspelled words in the document as words that do not match the other dictionary.

6. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, wherein the instructions for providing a word from the dictionary comprise:

instructions for identifying a plurality of words in the dictionary that correspond to the potentially misspelled word,

instructions for ranking the plurality of words, and

instructions for presenting the ranked words.

7. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, wherein the instructions for designating the potentially misspelled word as matching in the dictionary comprise one of:

instructions for treating the potentially misspelled word as correctly spelled, or

instructions for visually marking the potentially misspelled word in the document as matching in the dictionary.

8. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, further comprising:

instructions for providing a link to a document in the document corpus that contains the word from the dictionary.

9. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, further comprising:

instructions for providing an excerpt from a document in the document corpus that contains the word from the dictionary.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, further comprising:

instructions for presenting a user interface to a user to permit the user to select one or more documents to include in the document corpus.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, wherein the instructions for creating the dictionary include instructions for generating the dictionary after opening the document using the software application.

12. A method, comprising

identifying a document corpus;

creating a dictionary based on words in the document corpus;

identifying a potentially misspelled word in a document by identifying a word in the document that does not appear in a second dictionary is different from the dictionary created based on the words in the document corpus;

determining whether the identified word matches a word in the dictionary;

designating the identified word as matching a word in the dictionary when the identified word matches a word in the dictionary, where the match is determined when the word in the dictionary occurs more than a threshold number of times in the document corpus or in a document in the document corpus; and

providing a closely matching word from the dictionary or the second dictionary as likely to correspond to the identified word when the identified word does not match a word in the dictionary, where the closely matching word is identified by replacing one or more letters of the identified word, dropping one or more letters of the identified word, and/or adding one or more letters to the identified word to identify a word in at least one of the dictionary or the second dictionary.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the document corpus is identified on a per-document basis.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the document corpus is identified for a set of documents.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the document corpus comprises a single document.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the document corpus comprises a plurality of documents.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein identifying a document corpus comprises;

selecting a document from a set of available documents comprising at least one of word processing documents, spreadsheet documents, graphic presentation documents, drawing documents, e-mail documents, or web documents.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein designating the identified word as matching a word in the dictionary comprises one of:

treating the potentially misspelled word as correctly spelled, or

visually marking the potentially misspelled word as matching a word in the dictionary.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein providing a closely matching word from the dictionary or the second dictionary comprises:

identifying a plurality of words in the dictionary that are likely to correspond to the identified word; and

providing the plurality of words as likely to correspond to the identified word.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

ranking the plurality of words based on at least one of a number of times that the plurality of words occur in the document corpus or where the plurality of words appear in the document corpus.

21. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

providing a link to a document in the document corpus that contains the word from the dictionary.

22. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

providing an excerpt from a document in the document corpus that contains the word from the dictionary.

23. The method of claim 12, wherein identifying the document corpus includes presenting a user interface to a user to permit the user to select one or more documents to include in the document corpus.

24. The method of claim 12, wherein creating the dictionary includes generating the dictionary after opening the document using a software application.

25. A system, comprising:

means for presenting a user interface to a user to permit the user to select one or more documents to include in a document corpus;

means for creating a first dictionary based on words in the document corpus;

means for identifying a potentially misspelled word in a document created, modified, or opened by the user, where the potentially misspelled word is identified as a word that does not appear in a second dictionary that is different from the first dictionary;

means for determining whether the potentially misspelled word matches a word found in the first dictionary;

means for designating the potentially misspelled word matching a word in the first dictionary when the potentially misspelled word matches a word in the first dictionary, where the match is determined when the word in the first dictionary occurs more than a threshold number of times in the document corpus or in a document in the document corpus; and

means for providing a closely matching word from the first dictionary or the second dictionary as likely to correspond to the potentially misspelled word when the potentially misspelled word does not match a word in the first dictionary, where the closely matching word is identified by at least one of replacing one or more letters of the potentially misspelled word, dropping one or more letters of the potentially misspelled word, or adding one or more letters to the potentially misspelled word to identify a word that is in at least one of the first dictionary or the second dictionary.