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Subject:Re: readability indexes From:Matt Ion <mion -at- DIRECT -dot- CA> Date:Fri, 19 May 1995 23:41:50 EDT
On Fri, 19 May 1995 15:28:32 -0700 you wrote:
>>Marcia Coulter is right. The results of readability indeces have to be
>>realted topic, do context-sensitive grammar checkers exist? If not,
>>someone could make a lot of money developing them. I find the others
>>create more editing work than they save.
>So now I get to ask a question. As you envision it, what would a
>context sensitive grammar checker be? Sounds like an interesting
>concept.
Actually, such a thing does exist, at least within a particular context
itself. IBM's VoiceType (I think that's the name they've given it) system
uses their ICSS (Independant Continual Speech System, or something to that
effect) speech-recognition technology to allow direct-to-text voice dictation,
and can use special context-specific "dictionaries", including legal and
medical libraries (the medical one, as I recall, has nearly 50,000 words, and
you can add to that).
For example, the base product would probably not recognize a term like
"rhinoplasty" (a nose job, in other words :), but the medical library would.
The recognition system is excellent at determining the proper usage of
to/too/two, where/wear, and so on, based on surrounding context... and of
course, the profession-specific libraries expand on that.
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