Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
What's even more insidious is when OCR is combined with a spell checker, and a "mangled" word has been replaced by another word, which "fits in" to the sentence, and yet is totally wrong.
A good example is the Erksine Childers classic spy story "The Riddle of the Sands". Pretty much all the "free" versions of it, PG included, in a paragraph describing the appearance of the cabin of a boat, include a mysterious reference to "banks of yam". I defy anyone to guess what that really should be, without recourse to an original page scan or a printed copy of the book.
The correct text, in case you're wondering, is "hanks of yarn"  . |
I reckon that would be quite easy to figure out.
Given the context, 'yam' is obviously 'yarn'.
'banks' is more of a puzzler - but 'b' for 'h' is a very common OCR error, and about the only correction candidate that comes to mind for 'banks'.