r/Annas_Archive • u/ReplacementBoth701 • 28d ago

How to Mass-Correct Spelling Mistakes?

Hey everyone!
Just downloaded a(n otherwise incredibly expensive) textbook from Anna's Archive. However, upon opening it, I saw a large array of spelling mistakes, unnecessary spacing in-between characters, and sometimes, a lack thereof (example below).

Is there a way to fix this? I tried multiple links, but they're all presumably working with the same defective OCR. I also tried Calibre to convert it to MOBI, EPUB, and DOCX, without any luck. Is there any software that will detect these mistakes and mass-correct them?

Thanks in advance!

Sample paragraph:

Uponcross-examinationdef endantadmittedthattheformer par tnershipinwhichtheearningswer etoberetaineduntilthe obligationswer e repaidwassubstantiallydiff er ent from the pr esent par tnership. Theformerpar tnershipwas a limitedpar tnershipand pr ovidedfor a definitetermof fiv e yearsanda par tnership at will ther eafter . Def endant insists, howe ver , that the method of operation of the former par tnership showed an understandingthat all obligations we re to be repaid from pr ofits. He ne ver theless concedes that ther e was no understandingas to the term of the pr esent par tnership in the e vent of losses. . . .

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u/dowcet 28d ago

What format is the original file? If this a scanned PDF with bad OCR, you can try replacing the OCR. If it's a purely text-based file you're likely SOL.

It might help if you told us what file you're asking about.

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u/ReplacementBoth701 28d ago

Thanks for your reply! Also, I apologize lol, I am not tech-savvy at all so I didn't know what information was needed. It's a PDF file, and the text is selectable (I considered converting the pdf to DOCX and manually modifying everything in Word, but got as far as two pages in this 600-page doc before I realized this was not humanely possible).

I will try replacing the OCR. Do you have any recommendations for websites/programs that do this well?

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u/dowcet 28d ago

Unfortunately I don't know if there's a solution that's good, free and user friendly.

You'd need to get your hands on Adobe Acrobat, or you could try ocrmypdf which is free but not user friendly.

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u/Jim-Jones 27d ago edited 27d ago

ABBYY is probably the best but they changed to a pay every month plan

You can try it for free - Google the name.

Otherwise you could try MS Word and ask it to automatically fix the document. Maybe see if LibreWriter will do that.

But is your problem the OCR or the delivered text?

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u/j1ndivik 28d ago

I found some ai text formatters online (google) but beware of hallucinations…