Word Puzzles

While writing my last post I noticed that the spellchecker didn't recognise the word 'aerogramme', which is fair enough, as the whole point of the post was that aerogrammes are no longer really needed. But just now I was writing a letter in Google Docs, and it put the red, wiggly lines under 'blogging' and 'Google', both words you'd think it might have heard of.

I don't know where Google Docs keeps its dictionary. Maybe it piggybacks on one that's already on my PC,  though Blogger, in which I'm writing this and which is also owned by Google, is quite happy with both words. (But not with 'Blogger'! The plot thickens.)

Perhaps this reflects some streak of self-effacement among Google developers. I don't know. I was also intrigued a few years back when I spotted that Microsoft Word didn't recognise the word 'Dilbert', but was quite happy with 'Dogbert'. Presumably someone on the Word team was a member of Dogbert's New Ruling Class, and snuck that one in. Considering that the Excel team once hid a flight simulator in their program, one extra line in a dictionary file wouldn't have been too hard to manage.

And now it's time to check again whether Haxby has had its water supply reconnected, following the 'incident' (as Yorkshire Water usefully describe it on their web site) earlier today. I do miss the 21st century.