Spell Check Now Speaks Planner

A spokesperson for Microsoft announced a big addition to the dictionary behind the spell check function for the Word program—the nearly ubiquitous word processing and document formatting program that has been taunting planners and urbanists with false alarms, in the form of squiggly red lines, for years.

A press release announcing the change claimed that the change was necessary "...to recognize the increasing frequency and intensity of the debate surrounding the future of cities…"

But sources close to the decision also report that a combined effort of NIMBY, bike lobbyists, and parking protectionists proved impossible for Microsoft developers to ignore.

Among the words that will no longer trigger the seething red ire of the Word spell check police: urbanist, starchitect, fracking, bikeshare, Shoup, stormwater, infographic, parklet, wayfinding, rowhouse, upzone, (downzone, its worth noting, was already in the dictionary), Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Esri, geotag, placemaking, walkable, busway, and cycletrack.