I am looking for software or a web site or a reference book that
allows me to reverse spellcheck a word.  I want to be able to enter
(or look up) a correctly spelled word and receive a list of common
misspellings for that word.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 30 Jun 2002 20:54 PDT

This is a tough question!  In addition to searchspell, I've seen a
site called SpellWeb ( http://www.spellweb.com ), on which you can
"let the Web decide" (specifically, either Lycos or FAST) which of two
spellings is better.  But that still doesn't answer your question.

However, there is one site that at least comes close to what you're
looking for.  At the risk that you might use the information for free,
it is the Encarta World Dictionary ( http://dictionary.msn.com/ ).  At
the end of entries for commonly misspelled words such as "accommodate"
and "embarrass," it notes the "spelling trap(s)" into which many
people fall.

Would you accept this as an answer?

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Clarification of Question by tgs-ga on 30 Jun 2002 22:23 PDT

It's on the right track but dictionary.msn.com is a bit limited for
this purpose. I looked up 'February' and the word 'misspell' itself
(both very commonly misspelled) but there were no spelling traps
listed for these.

An ideal version of this resource would be Google's very own spelling
correction feature (but in reverse). For example, when you search for
the word "Febuary" on Google it responds with "Did you mean
_February_". Surely it must somehow work off a list of common
misspellings of Februrary to produce this response. I wish I could get
at that list!

In fact, all computer spell-checking software must work off a list of
common misspellings. Do the authors of all the spell-checking software
out there each develop such a list independently or is there some
common lexical resource available as a starting point?

It may very well be that there is currently no such resource. Your
suggestion was thoughtful and I feel like you deserver partial credit
somehow. Lets keep the question open, and if it turns out that this is
the best available, we'll keep your answer.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 01 Jul 2002 06:01 PDT

I've actually seen a couple of files, which you can download from the
Internet, of spell-check word lists.  I'm not sure whether they're
representative of all such lists, but they contained only correct
spellings.

I speculate that what word-processing spell-checkers do is notice when
a word is not on the list and then suggest the words from the list
with the most similarities.  But conceivably some spell-checkers work
differently.

My first thought had been the Google spelling correction feature. 
That would be perfect in reverse.

Anyway, I'll keep looking, and if somebody comes up with a
satisfactory answer before I do, I'll be interested to read it!

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 19 Jul 2002 21:51 PDT

I notice that I'm the only person to have posted comments on your
question in the past two weeks.  In light of that, I have two
thoughts:

1) Perhaps you should cancel and repost the question.  As a
Researcher, I tend to shy away from questions with a lot of comments,
since that suggests that several other Researchers have tried and
failed.  I assume that other Researchers feel similarly.  If you
repost the question (perhaps modified in light of the information
you've learned), you might draw new Researchers into the quest for an
answer.

2) Alternatively, I would be happy to do some more work to try to
answer your question.  I only suggest this since you were somewhat
interested in my dictionary.msn.com suggestion, and since I have found
two seemingly-better sites since then.  I would commit to another hour
of research, and a reasonable amount of additional research to
follow-up on whatever I find in the first hour, and then post the
results (in addition to what I found before).  Perhaps I'll find
nothing new, but I presume that there is at least one more good
resource out there.

What do you think?

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Clarification of Question by tgs-ga on 22 Jul 2002 07:15 PDT

justaskscott, your 19 Jul 2002 suggestion sounds reasonable. I know
you've already spent time on this. Take a final stab at it
(alternative 2) and post what you find for the answer.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 22 Jul 2002 09:17 PDT

OK.  I probably won't work on it today, because I want to make sure
that I have time to do good thorough research.  But I'll post my
results well before the question expires (barring unforeseen
circumstances).

Hi tgs,

Well, I gave it the old college try.  The only new and useful
materials I've found are two versions of an analysis by Cornell
Kimball of misspellings on Usenet:

"Common Misspellings and Dictionary Alternatives" [cached version]
The Simplified Spelling Society
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:zKWhXXT0gkkC:www.spellingsociety.org/pubs/journals/jsss-1999-2/pp3-10-Kimball-Mispelngs.mcw

"A Study of Some of the Most Commonly Misspelled Words"
David Barnsdale: English Spelling Reform
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/error.html

You can also find Usenet posts by Mr. Kimball on this subject, by
searching for "'Cornell Kimball'" and forms of the word "misspell" on
http://groups.google.com .

Other than that, I can only refer you to the sources I've previously
posted, which I will collect here for convenience:

Encarta World Dictionary
http://dictionary.msn.com/
(Incidentally, a few other dictionaries and style guides, online and
in book form, contain some entries for misspellings -- but like this
dictionary, they're not really what you're looking for.)

"100 Most Often Misspelled Words" 
yourDictionary.com 
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html 

"Hutchinson Dictionary of English Usage" 
Tiscali Reference 
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/ 

I am surprised that I could not find a comprehensive reverse spell
checker.  While I'll stop actively working on your question, I'll keep
it in mind until July 30, when the question expires.  If I think of
any other search strategies and come up with something else by then,
I'll let you know.

- justaskscott


Search strategies:  Many! -- or more specifically, searches on several
search engines for forms of the words "spell" or "misspell,"
frequently misspelled words, and/or their correct spellings, as well
as searches in bookstores and a large library for dictionaries, style
guides, and books devoted to spelling.

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Clarification of Answer by justaskscott-ga on 24 Jul 2002 06:18 PDT

A small clarification on my search strategy: I also searched for the
modifiers "frequent[ly]", "common[ly]", and "often", mostly in
conjunction with forms of the word "misspell".

I would suggest the website located at the following URL:
http://www.searchspell.com/typo/

Hope this helps.

In addition to the online tools, the database used is also available
for licensing in use in your own applications. More information on
this option is available at http://www.searchspell.com/db.html

not exhaustive but informative : http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ is
a list of common errors in English.

this is a starting point ...  (and it has Febuary, but not misspell)

http://www.library.cornell.edu/tsmanual/TSSU/comis1.html

You might try here http://www.wintertree-software.com/dev/ssce/java/features.html

or here: ://www.google.com/apis

Search words:  "Google's spellcheck"

In general, I try to refrain from negative comments, but I'll make an
exception here, as nicely as possible.

I think that rishel-ga's answer is incorrect.  If you click on that
link -- which is another part of the web site identified in
charles63-ga's comment -- and search for "February", you get only
"February", not "Febuary".  If you search for "misspell", you do come
up with "mispell" as well as "misspell," but if you try other commonly
misspelled words (such as "newsstand", "perceive", or "supersede"),
you get only the correctly spelled word.  If you search for incorrect
spellings of those words, then you can get the correctly spelled word.
 So it's a normal spell checker, not the reverse spell checker that
tgs-ga asked for.

(As for the link in charles63-ga's comment, it doesn't seem to be
working at the moment, but if I remember correctly from when it did
work, it misspelled words in ways that actual people might or might
not misspell them in real life (that is, if they're trying to spell
the words correctly, as opposed to typing them quickly on a keyboard
and making typos).  So I assume that this does not answer the question
either.)

I recommend that tgs-ga reject the answer, but not too harshly,
because I'm sure that rishel-ga intended to give you the correct
answer.

searchspell works as a reverse spell checker; rishel-ga just gave the
incorrect link.
The spellchecker is at http://www.searchspell.com/index2.cgi
The _reverse_ spellchecker is at http://searchspell.com/typo/

searchspell does not allow direct links to reverse spellcheck results,
but if you go to the reverse spellchecker and submit supersede as the
query, among the results you will find are: superceed, supercede, and
superseed, as well as typing character mistakes such as supesede and
supesrede.

Hello tgs-ga,

You should look at these links if you want a refund or (as it seems
you would prefer) a repost of the question:
https://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html#refund
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=refundrequest 

The FAQ indicates that you should request a clarification first --
which, by posting your response as a clarification, it seems you have
done.  Perhaps rishel-ga will be able to post an answer more to your
liking.  But if not, you can repost the question.

This is probably better than dictionary.msn.com, though perhaps still
not as comprehensive as what you're looking for:

"100 Most Often Misspelled Words"
yourDictionary.com
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html 

(Like some other lists I've seen, this list contains misspell/mispell,
but not February/Febuary.  Dictionaries with comments about "February"
imply that the word is often mispronounced, as opposed to misspelled. 
And indeed, if Google is any guide, "misspell" is misspelled more
frequently than "February" -- almost 10% of the time for misspell,
versus about 0.5% for February.)

After posting my last comment, I still had my Google search for
"misspell" on my computer -- and what do you know, on the first
results page there was another useful site:

"Hutchinson Dictionary of English Usage"
Tiscali Reference
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/

Note that the metatitle says "Dictionary of English Useage".  Funny,
I've never seen "usage" spelled that way before ....  ;-)