Patent US 4,355,371

A system for reducing the computation required to match a misspelled word against various candidates from a dictionary to find one or more words that represent the best match to the misspelled word. The major facility offered is the ability to computationally discern the degree of apparent match that exists between words that do not perfectly match a given target word without requiring the computationally tedious procedure of character by character positional matching which necessitates shifting and realignment to accommodate for differences between the candidate and target words due to character differences or added and dropped syllables. The system includes a method for storing and retrieving words from the dictionary based on their likelihood of being the correct version of a misspelled word and then reviewing those words further to reduce the number of candidates that must then be examined in a high resolution positional match to find the candidate(s) which matches the misspelled word with the greatest character affinity. This technique reduces the number of candidates in contention so as to make a high resolution match computationally feasible on a real-time basis. The discriminant potential and the real-time computational burden associated with the technique are balanced in an optimal manner.