One of the quiet improvements in Office is the regular updates to the Office dictionary used mostly in Word and Outlook but also other Office programs. They even handle new terms like Coronavirus or names such as Buttigieg.
In olden days the main dictionary was only updated with major revisions of Office. Now the dictionary is connected to Microsoft’s cloud service and gets update with the latest terminology. Microsoft tracks the words used by users and adds anything that pops up often enough.
We ran a few words ‘ripped from the headlines’ through Word 365 to see what’s been added. Some global medical and US political news. All of them are OK according to Word. As we’ll see it’s for different reasons.
Coronavirus
The word ‘Coronavirus’ wasn’t even known until about six weeks ago, but it’s already in the Word dictionary. Nice, fast work.
Spell it wrong and there’s a prompt for the correct spelling
COVID-19 or Covid-19
Covid-19 doesn’t get a red squiggly line either which might surprise because the official name for the coronavirus is less than a day old, as we type this.
But the Office dictionary isn’t updated that fast. Any words with digits are ignored by the Word dictionary so Covid-19 won’t ever get a red spell check error.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar
Two of the Democratic frontrunners are also ‘present and correct’ in the Word dictionary.
Pete Buttigieg’s name shows up OK and a slight misspelling can be corrected from the spell suggestions.
Office can’t help with pronouncing Buttigieg, something even seasoned BBC presenters are having trouble with!
Amy Klobuchar is also in the Office dictionary, however even a single letter difference can confuse the spell suggestions. Probably because her surname is too similar to other dictionary words.
Almost needless to say that Bernie, Sanders, Elizabeth, Warren, Michael and Bloomberg have been in the Word dictionary long before this election season.
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