Question about "smart" text comparing

[TBA]

Excel 2000
Windows 2k Pro

Our company often has to compare address lists from databases from two or
more clients. What concerns us most are varying spelling differences and
user input errors. Road names are especially troublesome. What I'm looking
for is a way to make a qualitative statement of how "well" one road name did
when compared against every other road in the other list(s). For instance,
one list might have

N CEDAR POINT BLVD SW

and the other list might have

N CEDER POINT BLVD SW
or
CEDAR POINT BLVD
or

etc.

I know right off the bat that I would trim all lists involved. If a list is
separated into several columns then I would trim all elements before merging
them.

I also know that I can eliminate any exact matches from the compare process.
I was hoping to run this mystery routine and perhaps get a result of
something along the lines of 90% of List1 value is in List2 value, based on
character order.

Spell checkers are not an option since, unbelievably, spelling is arbitrary
in this application.

So, are there any methods out there? Links? Personal experience? Software
even?

TIA

-gk-