Big Brother Is Spell-checking You

A funny thing happened on the way to an article the other day. I was writing an innocuous story -- a feature about flying disc golf, no less -- and happened to mention Wal-Mart in a sentence describing the horror of suburban big box blight. Except, in my haste, I uncouthly typed "Walmart" by mistake. Thankfully, I was saved from sure embarrassment by the indispensable spell-checking function of my word processing program, Microsoft Word. It knew "Walmart" should in fact be "Wal-Mart" and clinically, confidently told me so.

Whew, I thought. Nearly had to flip open a phone book to make sure my copy was correct. But then I started to contemplate the ramifications of a proper corporate name being considered proper usage in what must be one of the world's most popular computer programs. I mean, they're overlooking the most important rule of Scrabble: No proper names! If Wal-Mart is now part of our official electronic lexicon, I wondered, then how many of its brand-name cousins have joined it?

So I conducted a little experiment. Type "cocacola" in Microsoft Word and you're informed that "Coca-Cola" is the only recommended replacement. Lower-case "coke," however, is okay; I suppose the word is so familiar to us that we needn't bother capitalizing it anymore. Lower-case "nike," on the other hand, is wrong. It should be "Nike," I'm told, or a slew of similar-sounding words, from "Nikka" to "nice" to "pike." Likewise, "pepsi" should be "Pepsi." But buried amongst the list of amusing suggestions, like "peeps" and "papoose," we're also told that "PepsiCo" is an acceptable English (United States) word.

Surveying the various brand names visible on items in my office, I decided to do some willy-nilly spell-checking. "Timexx," I discovered, is incorrect, but "Timex" is fine. "Toshiba," the company that makes the computer on which this rant is being composed, is in there, too. My basketballs aren't so fortunate. "Spalding" garners the suggested spellings "Spading," and though "Wilsonx" does net me "Wilson," that's likely because Wilson is also a popular name for people.

Leaving the confines of this room, I threw in a few more terms. "Prozac" is in the dictionary, as are "Sony," "Hitachi," "Mitsubishi" and "Honda." (So are "Chrysler" and "globalization," by the way.) Other finds: "Samsung" apparently doesn't measure up to its electronics-company brethren, nor does "JVC," but "IBM" is okay.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Relax with a "Gatorade" -- and with Word's help you'll never misspell this tasty, thirst-quenching beverage again.

Now this is where things get complicated, because International CorrectSpell by the INSO Corporation -- the standard spell-checker for Microsoft Word -- includes thousands of proper names. Countries, cities, people... they're all in there. We've been using these words for centuries. Brand names, by comparison, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Yet they've managed to quickly find their way into what's arguably the framework for much of the communicating western society does today. What gives?

To get to the bottom of this, I put in a call to the INSO Corporation. Apparently they recently changed their name to EBT. (In an unexpected display of modesty, neither INSO nor EBT is in the spell-checker lexicon.) And EBT, unfortunately, is currently in the processing of liquidating.

"Everyone's been terminated," the woman who answered the phone told me before giving me the number for Chicago-based IntraNet Solutions, which purchased much of EBT's software before it went under. Calls to that company's public relations staff didn't conjure up a willing interviewee, so I went to the top and hooked up with Microsoft spokesperson Mark Thomas.

"We don't view ourselves as dictionary makers or experts," he tells me over the phone from Seattle, "so we work with companies that are and license content from them. We find experts and work with them. We try to find the best people to supply our content." Microsoft staff do oversee initiatives like spell-checker development, Thomas says, to find the right "balance" of words and ensure that decisions are intelligent, smart and made in a responsible manner.