Dear Janice,

You have an interesting problem regarding homophone errors, and
it is a particular concern to people, like me, who use the voice
synthesis of a screen-reader, because homophones don't get caught
by spell-checkers and, of course, the ear doesn't pick up
homophonic errors.

Interestingly, the screen-reader does alert the listener to
spelling errors in some cases. E.G., "necessary", misspelled as
"neccessary, and "professor", misspelled as "proffessor" or
"profesor", sound a lot more wrong than they look.

Perhaps you've noticed this additional usefulness of a
screen-reader when working with the student who you mention, but
I have noted that voice synthesis could be a useful tool for
sighted students because of its peripheral value of
mispronouncing spelling errors.

If you can't find a program to pick out homophones, you might try
altering the spell-checker's dictionary by deleting the
troublesome homophones, so that it flags them as misspellings. In
this way, it would flag those homophones so that the student can
make sure that they are correct.

Or, you can try creating a list of the troublesome homophones as
they occur. Then, your student can do a search of his documents
with that list and make sure that he/she has written the desired
word. I have a list of problematic words for me and I use this
solution.

If you do find a homophone checker, I and others on this list
would be eager to hear of it.

You inquired about a "phonetic spell checker", and the example
you gave, construction spelled with an initial "K", is a good
one. The problem of a spell-checker not presenting a useful list
of possible corrections, especially when the misspelling occurs
at the beginning of a word, is not unknown to people doing
ordinary spell-checking. For example, I once wrote a simple word
like "Jist" and my spell-checker refused to cough up the correct
spelling of "gist". The best solution would be a better spell-checker, but
meanwhile, it is useful to be aware of one's bug-a-boos, and to know how to
alter a misspelling so as to prompt your
spell-checker to come up with a better list of related words.

Sorry I don't have any advice about the specific programs, Jaws,
Word, or Read&Write, that you mentioned, but I hope that my
general advice proves useful.

Good Luck,
Peter Seymour

P.S. By the way, thank you for using the word "homophone"
correctly. Most people don't realize that the word "homonym" is
used best when reserved to describe words that differ only in
their meanings. Below is a relevant excerpt from my notes,
written for myself for now, but maybe for a book in the future.


the three most recognizable features of a word are its
1) meaning, the thing that is named: the "nym";
2) pronunciation or sound: the "phone"; and
3) spelling: the "graph".
The most familiar terms that group words based on their sharing
only one of these three features are:

Synonym -- words that name the same thing, e.g. injure and harm.
Antonym -- words that name opposing things, e.g. tall and short.
Homophone -- words that sound alike, e.g. waist and waste.
Homograph -- words with identical spellings, e.g. bow and bow
(one is bending at the waist or the front of a ship, the other
flings an arrow or is tied around a present, which is also a
homograph).

A homonym defines words that are both homophones and homographs,
and thus differ only in their meanings. The different senses of a
word, found listed under the same entry in a dictionary, are
homonyms. E.G., Bear -- noun, an animal vs verb, to endure.

However, because the distinguishing feature between homonyms is
the difference in what is named, "homonym" would be more accurate
if called just the opposite: a "heteronym", meaning different
name. The confusion of this word is exemplified by the fact that
it is often used instead of "homophone", and less so in place of
"homograph".

*********

At 02:50 PM 3/16/02 -0600, you wrote:

>I am looking for writing tools that will work with Jaws and
Word. I work with a student who spells phonetically and also has
trouble with homophones like wait and weight. For example, my
student might write this: "The hare die is read." meaning "The
hair dye is red." He needs:

1) a phonetic spell checker, which would be able to tell that
"knstrukshun" might mean "construction".

2) Something to detect "confusables" or homophones and give their
definitions.

>Read&Write is software that will do these tasks, but it has its
own speech output. If anyone has managed to use Read&Write or
Aurora with Jaws or knows of some other tool that works with
Jaws, please let me know!

>Thanks for your help
>Janice Sowokinos


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