Proper Nouns: Anthroponyms and MS Word Text Editor

The article analyzes the problem of computerized checking of Russian-language sentences written by Internet users and containing proper nouns. The author has tested the operation of a spell checker built in the Microsoft Word text editor (versions 20162018) with such texts. It is worth mentioning that this inbuilt spell-checking program uses multiple custom dictionaries that include proper names as well as their paradigms. As seen in the examples listed in the article, some of the names added to custom dictionary (and hypocoristic forms of nouns among them) have caused omission of mistakes, especially by inadequate syntax checking. The examples have been crosschecked with two voluminous dictionaries issued by the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as with the Dictionary of Russian Personal Names. Some Internet users tend to ignore capitalization of initial letters by typing proper names, even at the beginning of sentences. Most likely, this is a result of a wish to save some time and efforts by trying to use the Shift key more rarely. Microsoft Word's reaction to these deviations from literary norms of the Russian language is not always adequate (also on some other mistake types), which is exemplified by the article. Often the reason why the spell checker does not notice a proper noun written in small case is grammatical homonymy. The article presents an extensive list of appellatives (common names) and even verbs, in different word forms, that coincide with non-capitalized anthroponyms and their diminutive (hypocoristic) forms. The author has intentionally constructed some phrases with spelling mistakes in the first word, and the spell checker did not detect them. Why? Just because the first word appeared to be one of the proper nouns from the custom dictionary. The analysis of these and other examples shows that Microsoft Word's semantic-syntactic analysis needs improvement. Addition of foreign names (written in Cyrillic alphabet) sometimes also leads to mistakes not detected by the spell checker. For example, the last name ‘Philip' that is part of the built-in dictionary does not allow detecting a spelling mistake in the Russian name ‘Philipp'. Other examples of writing Russian names with omitting letters: ‘Valeri', ‘Mari', ‘Natali', ‘Nicola', ‘Sophi'. The article contains recommendations on how to increase the efficiency of computerized spell checking systems. The spell checker does not also detect mistakes in texts written by Internet users due to the addition of some words to the built-in dictionary. Such anthroponyms should be blocked in the built-in dictionary even if they rarely occur in contemporary texts.

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