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  The Conventional Spell-Checking Process
  Conventional spell-checkers validate words from a document against one or several dictionaries. Dictionaries are lists of words that are deemed correctly spelled. If there is a match between a document and a dictionary word, the word is deemed correctly spelled. Otherwise, the word from the document is potentially misspelled. In such a case, the spell-checking software typically searches its dictionaries for, and offers a list of, correctly spelled words that are similar to the potentially misspelled word. The user can substitute the misspelled word with one of those words when appropriate, or perform other related tasks.

Word-processor and email spell-checkers have typically two dictionaries: a language dictionary (also called system dictionary) and a user dictionary (also called personal dictionary). The language dictionary can't be edited by the end-user, but the user dictionary is personal and can be edited by its owner (as determined by that person's computer login).

Grammar rules aside, the location of a word in a document has typically no influence on its spelling status in most non-mapping applications. For example, the location of a word on this web page (at its beginning, middle or end) has no bearing on its spelling status. This is not the case when dealing with words on maps where, for example, text with proper nouns is often only correct near the features of such nouns. Examples are:

  • A street name, which is often only correct near the street that it labels and shouldn't exist anywhere else on the map. One would not want to use that spelling to spell check other streets, or any feature, anywhere in the world.
  • A locality name. In Virginia (USA), there is a town whose name is spelled "Accomac". The town is within a county of the same name, but the county is spelled as "Accomack". Conventional spell-checkers and dictionaries have no way of segregating among those spellings. The MapSpeller™ spell-checker does.

A spatially smart spell-checker is required to detect if a word on a map is correctly spelled or not. Edgetech America, Inc. is in the process of patenting a number of spatially smart spell-checking processes, as well as its spatially smart dictionary concept (implemented as Locationaries™).

 
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MapSpeller™ 3 for ArcGIS®
Page last updated on February 10, 2010
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