Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Should Gmail Alert You to Misspelled Names?

Would this make a good Gmail feature? When you address a recipient but you misspell the name, Gmail would alert you to it. Implementation-wise this could perhaps mean that if the first line contains a word that is close to the recipient’s name but a couple of letters off, it counts as misspelling. First and also last names could be handled like this.

For instance, if the recipient’s name were “Roger”, and I’d be writing “Hi Riger”, then Gmail before sending would ask me “Did you mean: Roger"? Once you answer this question with “no”, then this spelling could be added to a whitelist for that recipient (for instance, when you always and intentionally address a friend with a nickname). Admittedly Gmail already has a spell checker but perhaps an implementation like this could additionally help the (too) fast typers among us.

Should Gmail Alert You to ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (8)

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