Because the kids can spell words that Word can’t!
The 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee in the USA got us wondering how Microsoft Word would cope. So we fired up Word 2013 with the latest English (US) dictionary as supplied by Microsoft.
We selected 30 words used in the final rounds of the spelling bee, Microsoft Word only recognized two of them. All the rest had the dreaded red squiggly line underneath.
The two words not underlined were:
Schadenfreude – is recognized by Word 2013. But only when capitalized. Probably because, as Wikipedia notes “the term schadenfreude is sometimes capitalized to mimic German-language convention as German nouns are always capitalized”. Alas, the clever transposed variant ‘Freudenschade‘ (sorrow at another persons success) isn’t recognized by Word 2013.
Ignimbrite a geological term definition is recognized by Word 2013.
All these words are unrecognized by Word 2013 US English – capitalized or not.
All these words are quite obscure, the public/free version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary (used in the Scripps Spelling Bee) doesn’t list most of these words. So it’s no surprise that the default Word dictionary doesn’t have them.
See Also
- Microsoft Word vs. Spelling Bee champions 2014
- OneDrive / SkyDrive and Office spelling
- iPhone blocked spellings in Word
- Language and Dictionaries in MS Word
- Language support in Microsoft Office
- Changing languages that come with Office
- Adding repeating words or phrases to the custom dictionary
- Persistent spell check missing an error
- Spell-checker pulps cookbook
- Word 2003: Obama or Osama
- Klingon = Clinton
- Word’s problem with a possessive Donna
- The Cheese Shop and Microsoft Word
- Palin isn’t in the Word dictionary
- The changing Word 2003 Thesaurus
- Inside the Word 2003 Thesaurus
- Office 2007 dictionary updates
