The MSGC checks “Owed to a Spell Chequer”

This poem of unknown original source (which is meant to be read aloud) exposes the weaknesses of spelling checkers in particular.

Spellcheckers are only able to distinguish between words that belong to a particular dictionary and words that do not (hmm… and which dictionaries are those, anyway?).

The MSGC likewise does not understand the meaning of the text it checks, so it is unable to tell if an incorrect word is used (a homophone in this case), creating incoherent strings of words in writing:

There were no spelling mistakes identified in the text, but the MSGC did manage to correct a few grammar or contextual vocabulary issues:

it’s → its

tolled → told

feet → feat

wee → we

knot → not

Their are → There are

However, the other corrections were bizarre. For some inexplicable reason, the MSGC felt that in three cases the words starting a new line had to be rewritten in lowercase:  

And even when the MSGC tried to guess the contextual meaning, it only partially succeeded and offered a correction that makes no sense in the larger context:

Text used in the experiment: “Owed to a Spell Chequer” (various versions available online); original author, source and date of publication unknown. Click here to download the version we used in .docx format.