The Weber (1970) and Van Orden (1987) Algorithm for determining spelling similarity

Entering two words in the form below and submitting them will return a value for "Graphic Similarity", as described in Van Orden (1987, p. 196)

This measure is based on:

• A: Sum of letters in each word/2
• B: If first two letters are the same B = 1 else B = 0
• C: Number of letters which are present in both words. Note: for meet / meet this is 4
• E: If last two letters are the same E = 1 else E = 0
• F: number of pairs of adjacent letters in the same order, shared by pairs
• T: ratio of shorter word to longer word
• V: number of pairs of adjacent letters in reverse order, shared by pairs

Then the Graphic Similarity = 10([(50F + 30V + 10C)/A] + 5T + 27B + 18E)

Orthographic Similarity is the ratio between GS of word one with itself and GS of word 1 and word 2 (Van Orden, 1987) .