SixTimesEight

Custom computer terminology wordlist

July 20, 2006 – 6:55 pm

Have you ever found yourself composing an email with Microsoft Outlook and notice that many of the words you’ve just typed are underlined in red even though your positive that they’re are spelled correctly? If you’re like me and most of your emails contain geek speak, then you have. That’s because Microsoft, who you might think of as the most geeky company on Earth, is a little behind the curve with the dictionary that they include with the Office suite.

Oddly enough, this dictionary knows about such slang words as dang, y’all, what’re, boonies, and whoop-ass, as well as most R-rated language.

During my stint with NetData, I had been slowly amassing my own custom dictionary within Microsoft Word. As I happened across computer terminology that was not recognized, yet I knew was spelled correctly, I’d add it to my dictionary. Several months ago I began to think about possibly getting this dictionary to a point where it could be used widely by my geek brethren, and then releasing it under an open source style license.

Well, my time is up with NetData. I’m starting my new job on Monday, so I have been clearing out my desk and PC of personal belongings. Just today I emailed myself the custom dictionary so I could use it at home, and I remembered that I had wanted to share it on the internet. It’s nowhere near what I would call ready. It’s got tons of terms that I commonly use, based on the context of what we do at NetData. But it needs to include a LOT more of the common computer terminology that I would expect people to be using.

So, someday we’ll all be able to type words like spyware, adware, Firefox, Athlon, ipconfig, and webmail with the confidence that they are in fact real words and that they’re spelled correctly.