How do I spell that word? Ask the Kelvinometer!

Hi,

Somewhere around the mid 1900s the dictionary makers decided to start recording the words we use and stopped being a guide on how to spell. This has always caused me a degree of frustration. In Australia there are thousands of words which have more than one spelling. I personally would like to use the preferred spelling and based on the number of people downloading the Kelvin version of the spellcheck dictionary files, so do many others.

When I started the dictionary work I knew I wanted to create a spellcheck dictionary that offered the preferred spelling to make my life easier. At the time I didn't know what this was called and so I called my dictionary the Kelvin dictionary. I have since learnt what I was creating is called a prescriptive dictionary. (A descriptive dictionary is one which provides the different variations and the meaning.)

The two main dictionaries in Australia (the Macquarie and the Oxford) generally list the preferred spelling (the spelling used by more people) as the first entry and then an also entry for alternate spellings. Sometimes the dictionaries however differ.

That is when I turn to the Internet and the search engines. By searching on the different variations and restricting pages to Australia, often the Internet resolves the issue of which variation is the preferred spelling.

Since I do this quite a bit I decided to write a basic tool for myself where I could enter two words and I obtain the search engine results. I call this tool the Kelvinometer (which is from an in-joke with one of my friends).

For those who are interested I am making my rather raw tool available at the following address.

http://www.onlineconnections.com.au/kelvinometer/


Please enjoy. - Kelvin Eldridge