The Proof is in the Spell-Checker - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences
Abstract
Scientific terms such as "hematopoietic" and "chemokine" are not found in the native spell-check program included with standard word processing software; as a result, red squiggly lines appear throughout scientific documents, drawing the writer's attention away from the task of writing and toward words that were spelled correctly in the first place. While it's certainly possible to add each term individually to the dictionary, to do so would be time-consuming and tedious. To solve this problem, Portland, Ore.-based SCISOFT has developed software that significantly streamlines preparation of scientific manuscripts. SCISOFT's sciPROOF™ works directly with Microsoft Word® 2000, adding more than 200,000 technical, scientific, medical, and chemical terms to the basic spell-check program, and providing the user with other tools for scientific writing such as style checks and glossaries. Whereas some programs require that the user cut and paste documents from their word processor, sciPROOF integrates seamlessly with Word. "We didn't want to make any big changes that would inconvenience the user. Everyone pretty much knows how to spell-check--we just added layers to that," says Thomas Perrin, president of SCISOFT. As a result, sciPROOF's spell-check interface is virtually identical to Word's. Unique to sciPROOF is a style function that