Word Prediction in Microsoft Word
In 6th grade, I had to write a biography on a historical figure, so I chose Albert Einstein. Over the course of writing the paper I had to type words like “Einstein,” “Relativity,” “Berlin,” “Elsa” scores of times, and words like “Bohr” and “Quantum” several times. Even today, any lengthy document I write usually requires that I use a handful of nouns over and over again. Which makes me wonder (as I did in 6th grade) why doesn’t Word automatically detect repeated words and attempt to complete words as I begin to type? Excel has done this for years, so why not Word?
For a feature like this to work well it should be possible to manually add a words to the word prediction list, as well as have the program automatically detect repeated words and proper nouns. Manually adding words would allows users to input a handful of words when they start to document instead of having to wait for the program to figure out which words are being used repeatedly. Also, the word prediction list should be unique to each document. Word already has an “AutoCorrect” feature, but this is a global setting that affects all documents. Lastly, as this could be incredibly annoying with certain documents, it should be easy to turn off.
If there’s a third party plug-in, a good workaround, or just a feature in Word I’ve missed over the years please leave a comment. I’d love to check it out.
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Comments
Hi, I'm looking for something similar right now. Had any luck?
Posted by: Daniel | January 7, 2008 07:52 AM
OpenOffice has been doing this for quite a long time now. If you can become familiar and comfortable with the interface, the application is almost as versatile as Word.
http://www.openoffice.org/
Posted by: Spencer | January 11, 2008 05:31 AM
Texthelp has a word prediction feature. Along with some other help for the dyslexic user. In my experience it is OK but very buggy.
www.texthelp.com/
Posted by: Walter Mayne | January 24, 2008 04:15 PM