We all use spell check. Admit it, you know you do. Even with a degree in English, spell check is critical to my daily routine at a law firm. What is incredibly frustrating is when I want to know more than if a word is spelled right. I want to know if the sentence actually makes sense and sounds professional or if there might be a word that would get my point across better. But spell check doesn’t tell me, and I wish something did.

Well, an Israeli software company called WhiteSmoke recognized the need and has developed an outstanding solution. Their program scans written English text and makes suggests of ways to improve sentence structure, make sentences clearer and more fluent to the English language, a.k.a. “text enrichment.”

The program provides specific suggestions for improvement of the document based upon relevant content and context, derived from the millions of English language documents stored in its data base. Everything from government and legal documents to newspapers to short stories.

What got this idea hopping was globalization and the fact that the internet is dominated with the English language. Important professional documents can be intimidating, but so can e-mails to clients and employers. WhiteSmoke’s program provides a means for communicating with others without your job hanging in the balance.

And WhiteSmoke’s number one buyer: the U.S, which isn’t surprising. Not only do our regional dialects, and lack of confidence, hinder the proper use of context and grammar, but there is also a tremendous demand among those who know English only as a second language. Even if they can speak fluently, English is an exceptionally difficult language to produce accurately on paper. WhiteSmoke’s software can relieve some serious stress in that department.

WhiteSmoke, whose name is derived from the Native American tradition of communicating with smoke signals, has made its software easy to download from the internet (simple Google or Yahoo! search “WhiteSmoke”). The basic program costs $79, while the executive version, which specializes in medical, legal and creative writing, will run about $250.

This is one of those ideas we all wish we would have thought of first. Regardless of whose idea it was, I get the feeling WhiteSmoke’s product will be a common additive to Microsoft Office in the years to come. And WhiteSmoke is already reaping the benefits of this innovative commodity.

Source:
• BusinessWeek.com: Software That Will This Sentence Fix

Tags: text enrichment

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