SPELLCHECK CHECKS BRANES AT DOOR — by Steve Nadis
I’m writing something about string theory and geometry. I’ve been at it for six months now and may be at it for another year (assuming I get some encouragement to continue). My spellchecker, however, is not up to the task. Here’s what it suggested in my latest document: Write bran for brane, tours for torus, choral for chiral, barns for branes, cornfield for conifold, freemasons for fermions, and Lodge Harden Colluder in place of Large Hadron Collider.
Posted by in 16:05:16
It’s apparently in-sync w/ MY brain, Snake.
I don’t know what the heck ANY of those terms mean!
My Random-House isn’t much help either.
It ONLY lists ‘torus’ (1969 College Edition).
Then again, due to it’s ‘vintage’ it’s clueless
on: modem, Internet, LCD, LED, floppy (remember THOSE?)
&… blog.
Not to be harsh, MP, but it might be time for a new dictionary.
that seems to be the consensus at this end, as well.
my literary “agent” recommended the american heritage dictionary “2nd college edition”.
do you concur this might be an apt choice? e e polo
p.s: is there such a thing as a ’small’ hadron collider?
Sounds like you’ve got an excellent agent, MP (ee?). I think the colliders have to be pretty big. Otherwise they’ll do more colluding than colliding.
There are a lot of “add-on” scientific dictionaries you can get for MS Word. Some of them plug right into Word. Others you use separately after you’ve created the document.
Are you at least adding the new terms to Word’s dictionary as you do the spell-check?
Gatemouth, once again I am in awe. I had no idea you could do such things.
Brane does not appear in my Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 2001 second edition, but a Google search produces 1.4 million hits. Google doesn’t appear in my in my dictionary or spell check, but 2001 may be too long ago for Google to have been accepted into the fraternity of the printed dictionary, and my spell check is a Microsoft product. A google (or is it Google, since it is a product name like Tide) search of specialized, on line dictionaries was disappointing - no branes for string theory, but there were definitions of braid theory and knot theory. Is the loom of our minds spinning out too much specialized language? I prefer painting pictures.
I agree, Chuck, pictures are great. On the other hand, branes are hard to draw.
Snake, you D-branes! But all this physics talk is making me feel like a p-brane.
At least everyone’s keeping it polite. No one’s dropped the “F-string” yet.
Agreed, Gatemouth. We won’t talk about that one. In fact, let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist.
Your Word program should have a built-in custom dictionary that you can add words to like fermion. Try a right-click then “Add to Dictionary”.
Thanks, OR. Amazingly I didn’t know about that until you & Gatemouth brought it to my attention. As a result, this blog just paid for itself.