| This document presents a research study that identifies spelling errors committed by people writing in Spanish and how the errors are corrected. A usability test was conducted in which 20 people were asked to write a document in Spanish using Microsoft Word. During the writing process, the interaction of the participants with Microsoft Word was recorded. The recordings were then analyzed to identify the errors committed by the users and how these were corrected. Errors were classified in eleven different types. The most important finding was that a large proportion of the errors were related with words that include a, e, i, o, u, or n characters. The study revealed that three fourths of the errors are corrected using one out of four possible techniques. The large majority of the errors were identified and corrected on the spot using the backspace key. Many of the uncorrected errors were errors that were not detected by the word processor. However, with simple algorithms these errors can be detected and corrected. We developed algorithms to detect four of these types of errors. The algorithms were able to detect and provide correct alternatives for all the errors in words that currently exist on the dictionary used to implement the algorithms. |
