The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 02, 1998
Filed:
Sep. 01, 1994
Steven J Rayson, Seattle, WA (US);
Dean J Hachamovitch, Seattle, WA (US);
Andrew L Kwatinetz, Seattle, WA (US);
Stephen M Hirsch, Seattle, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A method and word processing system for automatically replacing one or more characters of text entered by a user in a word processing document with the corresponding plain text, formatted text, or other object. The user can select among a plurality of predefined autocorrect options in an Autocorrect dialog box that is displayed when the autocorrect function is selected from the menu or toolbar of the word processing system. These options include changing straight quotes to smart quotes, correcting words that begin with two initial upper case letters so that only the first letter is upper case, capitalizing the first letter of any sentence that is not capitalized, capitalizing the names of the days of the week if not already capitalized, and replacing text entered by the user with either plain text, formatted text, a graphic picture, or other type of object. Using the autocorrect function, the user can automatically correct commonly misspelled words, and automatically expand relatively short groups of characters to longer words, paragraphs, or graphic objects. Each character or string of characters that is to be replaced is associated with a 'definition' entered as plain text, formatted text, or as an object. The entry is added to an autocorrect list displayed to the user in the Autocorrect dialog box. Any entry in the autocorrect list can also be deleted or changed by the user. A second embodiment makes an intelligent decision concerning autocorrection of text, based upon the time interval between keyboard events.