Find misspellings with OpenRefine

Hey, reporters! We haven’t done a big ol’ nerdy data tool in a while, so here we go. OpenRefine is a well known tool among the data community, but has the potential to be life changing if you work with large datasets and haven’t heard of it before.

 

OpenRefine identifies similar items in a dataset and groups them together. It makes it easy to clear up alternate names, correct spellings or even identify trends.

For my Data+Journalism book, I talked to one reporter who found over 250 different spellings of the word “Chihuahua.” That’s the kind of thing you want OpenRefine for!

Admittedly it can take a bit of time to learn how to use its “facets” and “clusters” – but OpenRefine offers lots of tutorials online. Correct those misspellings, reporters!