Google Docs updates spell checker to recognize words like ‘Skrillex’

Élyse Betters | Mar 21 2012 - 1:52 pm PT

Google Docs can now spell check ~~threw~~ through the Web.

Software Engineer Yew Jin Lim took to the official Google Docs blog this afternoon to explain how the Internet is helping Google Docs get smarter. The ambiguous and ever-adapting Googlebot is able to crawl cyberspace and adapt to words. The resulting action enables Google to improve suggestions during misspelled queries in Google Search. Well now, the same process is applied to Google Docs…

“To prove it, today we’re launching an update to spell checking in documents and presentations that grows and adapts with the web, instead of relying on a fixed dictionary. This update has a few big advantages over traditional spell checkers,” announced Lim in the blog post.

Lim offered examples to depict how the updated spell checker is a vast improvement to the previous tool. He said suggestions are contextual and can discern between homonyms, homographs, and homophones. In other words, Google Docs can now understand words in context to better identify mistakes like the one in this story’s first sentence.

Furthermore, the spell checker can evolve and recognize current words:

As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they’ll automatically be included in our spell checker—even pop culture terms, like Skrillex.

Google Docs is Google’s cloud-based word processor and productivity suite. It allows users to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online with an option to import formats from competing services.