To set this up, we’ll have our inversion table. Although some of the ways that words become difficult to match are dealt with by the lookup, and the ‘edit difference’ approach is good for interpreting mistyping, in truth, both that and the sound-alike technique work together to catch a wide variety of errors. We’ll use three basic techniques to cope with all this: the ‘edit difference’, the hardcoded ‘common misspelling’ lookup, and the sound-alike. mistyping – computer as copmuter or comptuer.
misspellings – definitely often rendered as definitly, definately or defiantly.multiple valid spellings – encyclopaedia, encyclopedia.national word differences – pants and trousers.national spelling differences – yoghourt, yogurt and yoghurt.