ORTHOGRAPHY AS A FUNDAMENTAL IMPEDIMENT TO ONLINE INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL

Orthography is the linguistic study of written language: Elements of t ext such as letters, punctuation marks, and spelling. Information retr ieval systems operate in the orthographic realm matching some text str ings (i.e., index entries) from documents with other text strings (i.e ., query terms) from patrons. During the early history of information retrieval, it has been convenient to assume the rationality and unifor mity of orthography in order to concentrate effort building informatio n retrieval systems. Fundamental orthographic problems have persisted into modern information retrieval systems, however, where white-space normalization and the arbitrary treatment of punctuation have exacerba ted the orthographic impediment to information retrieval.