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A Spell-Checker for Scientific Terms?

Posted by Cliff on from the properly-spelling-'decyltriclorosilane' dept.

deaflamb wonders: "I'm a biology major and have been writing a paper for a class. I'm using Microsoft Word on my mac. It's annoying me how often I have to click 'ignore' or 'add' on the spell checker when it comes across words only used in Science. Was wondering if there where any free scientific spell checkers out there that can be added into Word or OpenOffice (since I use that too), and how well they work?" It didn't take me long to find these guys, who look like they cover a significant portion of the terms used in the medical and science world, however, their price for a single user license for only one of their specialty packs can run into the hundreds of dollars. Might there be other options that are a bit more affordable or, as the deaflamb asks, free?

5 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Not as far as I know by poopdeville · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But this is a great idea for a collaborative, freely available project. I'm a mathematician by trade and have run into a similar problem. Want to work together?

    --
    After all, I am strangely colored.
    1. Re:Not as far as I know by Intron · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wouldn't the simple way to do this be to take the indexes of a few of publications in a given field and process them into a list? You aren't looking for definitions or anything, just correctly spelled words.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  2. non standard phonetics by bluelip · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The last time I played w/ spellcheckers, the 'soundex' function was tops. It basically mapped phonetic sounds to values and summed them.

    The problem w/ scientific terms is that the rules and patterns that compose a soundex value don't hold up wo complex words.

    The same approach may possibly be taken, but the patterns and values will need to refined/redefined.

    --

    Yep, I never spell check.
    More incorrect spellings can be found he
  3. Simple solution? by sithkhan · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Why not go to Wikipedia or MIT.edu or some other website that that has text with the subject matter you are studying and simple copy and paste, and then add to dictionary? Or look on Gutenberg.org and copy and paste those. It worked for me when I was writing a paper on The Oddessey and had to use those uncommon Greek spellings. YMMV.

    --

    is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
  4. use amalgamated OOo dictionaries by pbhj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1, How about you have a website where people upload their private dictionaries (with a language option too??). This shouldn't be too hard using the OOo files as they are presumably XML, might be quite server intensive though. Strip the words and tabulate them (add them to a (pgsql?) database) - you can throw any away that you have enough of or that have already been rejected as misspellings (sp?!?).

    If a word appears with the same spelling in 100 (or downloaders preference) dictionaries then it is tagged for inclusion in the master dictionary.

    Uploaders could specify the general area they write in as well as the language, eg Physical Sciences, Literature, Agriculture, ... so a dictionary request could be limited by subject field too.

    Require a dictionary upload _OR_ payment of a fee to avoid freeloaders.

    2, ...
    3, Profit ??!

    [PS: I just looked and OOo uses .aff or .dic formats.]