In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words • Hacker News Board

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#121

Post by snickerbockers » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #103

joshuat wrote: post #101

I find it odd that many of both the blog comments and the HN thread comments are focused on debating the merits of the feature itself rather than the broader point of the article, that a small isolated change made by one person can have a massive, long-lasting impact on software and on how billions of people interact with it for decades after it was implemented. It’s like no one ever took a humanities class

This isn't necessarily true. The fact that we're still using squiggles decades later means that nobody else has come up with a better idea. If there are no better ideas, if this is the best UI design for spellchecking there is, then it's simple enough that, if not for him, someone else would've came up with it. How many ways are there to highlight a word in a sentence, really, especially when your constraint is that…

>we're still using squiggles decades later

What in this context is "we"? I can name plenty of programs that accept textual input yet don't even spellcheck at all. The green squiggles are hardly ever even seen outside of word processors, for which it is practically mandatory to implement a 1:1 copy of the latest MS Word UI.

Evidently my browser uses red squiggles for what it believes to be spelling mistake because it just highlighted "UI" in my previous paragraph. That there is a chronic pandemic of terrible spelling in just about every online form of communication proves that the red squiggles are not effective at grabbing anybody's attention.

>If there are no better ideas

Counterpoint: 4% of the population cannot distinguish between red and green so at the very least I can say with confidence that using colors (especially those two colors in combination) is not a sufficiently effective way to distinguish between poor spelling and poor grammar. If it were up to me I'd replace one or both of them with some simple geometric shape such as an ellipse or a rectangle that encloses the word or phrase which is incorrect. The shape could still be colored to make it stand out to people who can distinguish between colors as long as the shape for grammar and the shape for spelling can be distinguished from one another without knowing what color they are.

Another good alternative is blinking like that old HTML tag. I don't know if there are any common disabilities which prevent people from easily discerning motion on a computer monitor (other than disabilities that inevitably apply to anything on the monitor, such as severe myopia or blindness) but blinking cursors are apparently acceptable so probably not.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#122

Post by tomhow » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

utopiah wrote: post #120

tomhow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fine to criticize corporations, thoughtfully. It happens all the time here. And YC exists to challenge major corporations and continues to work hard every day to help startups challenge them. My request to you has nothing to do with criticizing corporations and everything to do with posting lame comments that drag this place down and do nothing at all to diminish corporations.

Anyway, apologies for the whole thread, I'll be more mindful both of the guidelines and how to provide a better avenue for meaningful conversations, thank you for trying to make this a better place.

Many thanks :) We know it can be hard to stay on the right side of the guidelines and we don't expect everyone to perfect (how boring!) but we just need people to keep them in mind and do their best.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#123

Post by 1718627440 » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55

thombat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used character styles that set the proofing language with hot keys assigned, so shift-alt-1 sets to English, shift-alt-2 to German, etc. As character styles they apply both to the current insertion point when typing or any selected range (e.g. when I forgot to set it proactively and now have a line spattered with wiggles) Or just set the proofing language for the entire text to None to banish all spelling and gramm…

I didn't know you could do that, although one of the languages I write in (Gaelic) is not really supported at least in Office 365 at all. Meine Deutsch ist so schlecht, MS Word hat gar nichts Ahnung wie das auseinanderfutzeln kann.

    s|Meine|Mein| # Gender mismatch
    s|nichts|keine|
    s|wie das|wie es|

Just fyi.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#124

Post by 1718627440 » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55

thombat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used character styles that set the proofing language with hot keys assigned, so shift-alt-1 sets to English, shift-alt-2 to German, etc. As character styles they apply both to the current insertion point when typing or any selected range (e.g. when I forgot to set it proactively and now have a line spattered with wiggles) Or just set the proofing language for the entire text to None to banish all spelling and gramm…

I didn't know you could do that, although one of the languages I write in (Gaelic) is not really supported at least in Office 365 at all. Meine Deutsch ist so schlecht, MS Word hat gar nichts Ahnung wie das auseinanderfutzeln kann.

    s|Meine|Mein| # Gender mismatch
    s|nichts|keine|
    s|wie das|wie es das|

Just fyi.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#125

Post by 1718627440 » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55

thombat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used character styles that set the proofing language with hot keys assigned, so shift-alt-1 sets to English, shift-alt-2 to German, etc. As character styles they apply both to the current insertion point when typing or any selected range (e.g. when I forgot to set it proactively and now have a line spattered with wiggles) Or just set the proofing language for the entire text to None to banish all spelling and gramm…

I didn't know you could do that, although one of the languages I write in (Gaelic) is not really supported at least in Office 365 at all. Meine Deutsch ist so schlecht, MS Word hat gar nichts Ahnung wie das auseinanderfutzeln kann.

    s|Meine|Mein| # Gender mismatch
    s|nichts|keine| # wrong wordclass
    s|wie das|wie es das| # missing subject in subclause

Just fyi.

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#126

Post by ErroneousBosh » Sat, Jun 27, 2026, 8:21 AM UTC

1718627440 wrote: post #125

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know you could do that, although one of the languages I write in (Gaelic) is not really supported at least in Office 365 at all. Meine Deutsch ist so schlecht, MS Word hat gar nichts Ahnung wie das auseinanderfutzeln kann.

s|Meine|Mein| # Gender mismatch s|nichts|keine| # wrong wordclass s|wie das|wie es das| # missing subject in subclause Just fyi.

Thanks :-) I did say my German is pretty bad.

Annoyingly when I get stuck in German I lapse into Gaelic rather than English, which is generally even less helpful.

Also I hear and see "gar nichts" used as part of a sentence but not "gar keine" especially if you're saying "I have no idea about that", can you point to something that explains that for me?

Re: In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

#127

Post by 1718627440 » Sun, Jun 28, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #126

1718627440 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s|Meine|Mein| # Gender mismatch s|nichts|keine| # wrong wordclass s|wie das|wie es das| # missing subject in subclause Just fyi.

Thanks :-) I did say my German is pretty bad. Annoyingly when I get stuck in German I lapse into Gaelic rather than English, which is generally even less helpful. Also I hear and see "gar nichts" used as part of a sentence but not "gar keine" especially if you're saying "I have no idea about that", can you point to something that explains that for me?

> I did say my German is pretty bad.

Yeah, but probably still better than 90% of the world population. Keep it up.

> Also I hear and see "gar nichts" used as part of a sentence but not "gar keine" especially if you're saying "I have no idea about that", can you point to something that explains that for me?

"Nichts" means nothing. You don't say "I have nothing idea about that.", you need an adjective there, not a noun. "gar nichts" is "Nothing at all", "gar keine ..." is "No ... at all". You could say "Word hat ein Nichts an Ahnung": "Word has a nothing of knowledge" (That sounds wrong in English.), but that would be rather poetic and not expected in normal text.

> but not "gar keine" especially if you're saying "I have no idea about that"

I don't know, what you mean there, without context, I would translate "I have no idea about that" as "Davon hab' ich keine Ahnung.".

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I am sorry for the spam, I was in a area with bad connectivity. Actually I am surprised the POST request got through at all, because the network connection never got established and the received reported 0.