Search engine as spell checker (idea)
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| Anyone can look words up in a dictionary, and of course Webster 1913 is a great tool, but there is a new option that lets one use logic while figuring out how to spell words. This works best where one has the options narrowed down pretty solidly to a few candidates. Go to your favorite search engine (I prefer google) and enter each candidate into the search box on successive searches. Don't bother looking at the links returned, just note how many items there are for each candidate. One of them, the correct one, will have a number of results at least an order of magnitude greater than the others. That's the correct spelling. For example, a search today, February 17, 2001, using Google returned: VARIATION RESULTS corolary 239 corrolary 1,590 corollary 206,000 corrollary 984
Clearly corollary is the correct spelling.
July 2007:
To make things even easier, Google now offers suggestions when it seems one might have misspelled a word, i.e. "Did you mean _________?" Combine this with a browser that has a text-box up by the address bar that's linked to a search engine and you truly have one stop shopping.
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