From: Matthew Smillie <M.B.Smillie@...>
Date: 2005-12-01T10:46:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Splitting a text file into sentences

On Dec 1, 2005, at 0:36, Dave Howell wrote:

>
> On Nov 30, 2005, at 15:35, Matthew Smillie wrote:
>
>> On Nov 30, 2005, at 22:02, Dave Howell wrote:
>>
>>> you can solve all "Mr./Dr./Ph.D." cases by the fact that if a  
>>> word starts with a cap and ends with a period, it's not a sentence.
>>
>> I'm not sure that's a very good rule, Dave. There are two  
>> sentences here.
>>
>> The above rule may catch titular abbreviations, but over- 
>> generalises to produce a false negative in the above example.
>
> I hadn't intended to provide a single magical rule that was perfect  
> in isolation, after all. {chuckle}

Didn't assume you were!  It was just a good example to use for a  
"this can be harder than it looks" couple of lines of warning, since  
it's been my experience that people don't anticipate false negatives  
as well as they do false positives.


matthew smillie.