19. A computer-implemented method for resolving an ambiguous word in an electronic document, comprising: performing operations in a computer programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software, the operations comprising: searching an electronic document stored in a memory of the computer for a typesetting placeholder, wherein a typesetting placeholder is a recognized non-alphabetic character that formats the document; determining in a programmable processor of the computer that the typesetting placeholder is ambiguous and as a consequence creating a set of candidate solutions from a string of characters including the ambiguous typesetting placeholder, wherein each solution in the set of candidate solutions comprises one or more character sub-strings created by uniquely resolving the ambiguous typesetting placeholder in the string of characters, wherein the set of candidate solutions is stored in memory of the computer; searching a dictionary stored in a computer storage device for the one or more character sub-strings in each solution in the set of candidate solutions; and using the dictionary search result to resolve the ambiguous typesetting placeholder in the string of characters.
28. The method of claim 19 , further comprising: identifying one or more words in a document that are not ambiguous; and automatically adding the one or more words to the dictionary.