Design of an interactive spell checker: optimizing the list of offered words

摘要

Interactive spell checking is an instance of a general problem that is characterized by doubt as to the correctness of an input, and the need to correct the input or offer a set of possible corrections. Our contention is that a well-defined model can provide a basis to improve the performance of spell checkers and other similar applications such as voice recognition, historical document searches, and data imputation among others. In this paper, we introduce a model designed to help the spell checkers within word processors place the correct word at, or near, the top of the list of offered words. A prototype spell checker (SP) is developed based on the model. It is tested on documents typed by subjects and found to be very accurate.