First Principles

The other day I attended a pitch meeting for a project that involves studio photography. This was the first item in the photographers' proposal:

Principle Photography

Fortunately for their health, the photographers weren't in the room during the meeting, so their throats remain unthrottled and they didn't have to hear me shriek, "Dudes! This is what you do for a living! How hard can it be to learn how to spell it correctly?"

Just kidding, of course. It wouldn't have happened because these days I am practicing serene detachment and saintly forbearance. (What? You hadn't noticed? Tough.) Instead of getting mad, I got creative.

Here's my brainstorm: If computer makers can annoy us with spellcheckers and grammar checkers, why can't they offer something the English-mangling masses truly need--a homonym/homophone checker?

Let's say you type "Principle Photography" into a proposal. Up would pop a window asking: "Are you sure? Principle means a code, standard, or rule. Principal means main, primary, or most important."

I mean, IANAP* but this sounds pretty easy to me. We'd load up the little debugger with the usual suspects: there, their, and they're; here and hear; your and you're; affect and effect; its and it's; cite, sight, and site; compliment and complement, eunuchs and UNIX; and so on. For good measure, we'd include irritating near-homonyms like lose and loose. A discreet beep, a helpful pair or trio of definitions, and hey presto! All's right with the whirled world. After twelve or seventy-five rounds of this, chronic misspellers might actually learn something they should have learned in fifth grade!

For all I know, such a thing already exists. (Yes, yes, Google helpfully asks "Did you mean principal photography?" But I'm talking about word processors here.) Judging from the rampant homonym/homophone abuse I see everywhere, I doubt it.

By the way, I'm available--at my usual rates--to develop the name for this truly useful utility. Homonymble, Close But No Cigar, and Sounds Like ... spring immediately to mind. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Gates: have your people call my people.

* I Am Not A Programmer

P.S. Excellent list of English-language homonyms here. From the introduction by the list's author, Alan Cooper:

I consider homonyms to be the prime numbers of the English language. Like primes, they cannot be predicted by any rules of grammar or diction. In the [same] way that you can't search the number line for primes, you cannot systematically search the dictionary for homonyms. You just have to find them, like Easter Eggs in the dictionary.

Comments

[ckenb]

Make sure you take your proposal to software developers, not computer makers. The hardware people probably couldn't care less. These days, it's pretty much a Microsoft world when it comes to word processing, isn't it?