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Diane M Frank
Diane Frank, as a lexicographer, has been writing dictionaries since 1996. Her first work, "Gabby's Wordspeller & Phonetic Dictionary" was the first phonetic dictionary ever written. Her intent was...view moreDiane Frank, as a lexicographer, has been writing dictionaries since 1996. Her first work, "Gabby's Wordspeller & Phonetic Dictionary" was the first phonetic dictionary ever written. Her intent was to help all those challenged with spelling the English language by designing a bridge between the 'sound of a word' and a standard dictionary. In the late 90's, and even up to today, there still hasn't been a resource tool as helpful to allow a word misspelled to be located in a dictionary as quickly as a Word Speller. Creating this dictionary which allows you to spell a word 'by the way it sounds' (phonetically) to find the correctly spelled word was a challenge. How many ways can you misspell a word?
She worked, modified, created and still continues to this day to produce a dictionary that is also a resource tool. Challenged herself, with knowing when to drop the 'y' in a word and how to spell it with suffixes attached led her to research for years all the conceivable suffix endings for over 75,000 words. No small task given that many book and online dictionaries do not provide this information for every root word. As well, they do not provide every conceivable prefix available for each base word either. She evolved the dictionary to allow a user to be able to learn all there is to know on how to spell root words with their prefixes and suffixes added.
As well, for those challenged with spelling, there may be up to six homophones for any given word. Homophones are words that sound like another word. She provides, in her dictionaries, all conceivable homophones for each root word. Examples of this are; carat, caret, carrot, karat. An example would be; their, they're, there or immigrant, emigrant, which are the most common confusable words.
Another challenge for spellers new to the English language are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Often referred to as 'confusable words'. She has researched for years (and continues to this day) to make certain that all confusable words are allowed for. Examples would be; read, fall, spring, etc.view less