BANGKOK - In a breakthrough moment for one of Thailand's largest media groups, 'The Nation' has announced that one of their editors has made the startling, “revolutionary” discovery of a computer application that automatically checks and clarifies the spelling of English words.

Group editor Pana Janviroj was fast to claim the news as a trailblazing moment in the history of journalism in the country. “The discovery of this program known as ‘spell check’ is the greatest breakthrough for English-language Thai media in the country since we discovered the thesaurus function in 2002,” he announced.

“We will apply this innovative program to all our archived stories beginning with the period of 1997-2007. We are hopeful some stories that even professional linguists could not understand will be salvaged,” he added.

A sub-editor, who works on the newspaper’s online content, reportedly stumbled upon the program, known as “spell check”, after telling the IT desk that “these squiggly red lines all over my story are driving me mad.”

The sub-editor was reportedly shocked to learn that the squiggly red lines signaled misspelled words and that he could check the correct spellings by using the application called “spell check”, which was invented in the 1970s.

News of the discovery quickly spread around Nation headquarters, where editors, reporters and copy editors could be seen intensely huddled around computers, checking the accuracy of spell check against old dictionaries and reacting with a mixture of awe and excitement at the speed and accuracy of the application, which is used on a daily basis by hundreds of millions of people around the world. 

New ‘Nation’ editor Thanong Khanthong said, “The spell check program will not change our commitment and professionalism. All the great features, columns, letters, and sports coverage will remain. We are simply presenting them in an adapted way as we and our readers ply the winds of change.”

One copy editor, who refused to be named, described the program as “magical. That’s magical with a ‘g’ not a ‘j’. Who knew?”

An editor in the Sports section, however, said he would resist the new-fangled technology. “I got a list I’ve been compiling for 17  years with words that thing never even heard of on it.” The editor’s list is, in fact, enormous, taking up three drawers and containing more than 17,000 words, though still 73,000 less than the spell check program.

The editor-in-chief of the new content-free paper ‘Daily Xpress,’ Tulsathit Taptim, said that the discovery of spell check would not impact the publication’s name.

“The new generation of sophisticated readers is much too clever to care about spelling words correctly. For this segment it is important to have trendy misspellings that highlight hip letters, like the letter X in Xpress. Spell check, while obviously an exciting new technology, is more suited to the older generation of ‘Nation’ readers.”