Scrivener 3 for Windows.
The document I’m writing includes the word Tohorā. Typing that “ā” at the end every time is a pain, so I would like to add it to the spelling dictionary so that it appears in the list of suggested words whenever I type “Tohora” with the plain “a”.
I have right clicked on “Tohorā” and added chosen “learn spelling”. I’ve selected it, and chosen “Add Selection to Auto Complete List”. Neither of these work - “Tohorā” doesn’t appear in the suggested words. This was something I was able to do in Scrivener 2 on Windows, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, or if this is a bug because of the unusual character?
I don’t have Windows to work on this for you, but my hunch it’s a system thing. In any event, can you use Scrivener’s ability to replace this text during compile step? Then you don’t have to think about it very much while writing.
Yes I’ll have to do a Find and Replace. Just kind of bugs me, as I was able to do it on earlier versions of Scrivener.
There have been past posts on adding to dictionary. Maybe search here. Also, it may be Windows getting in your way. dunno.
You’ve got the right idea, to use the Add Selection to Auto-Complete List, menu command. This will add it to the list, hosted in Project ▸ Project Settings..., under the Auto-Complete tab.
What is probably throwing you is that the defaults assume you do not want suggestions to be suggested while you type, but rather only upon manual request (the shortcut for that is found under Edit ▸ Completions ▸ Complete). If you prefer automatic suggestions, then in application settings, under the Corrections tab, look toward the bottom of the pane, and disable the In script mode only checkbox. Now, the moment you type “T”, the full “Tohorā” should appear.
P.S. I’ve clarified the thread title, as custom spelling dictionaries are not meant to operate as an auto-complete tool at all. They only adjust what isn’t marked as an error.
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Thank you. I did wonder whether I might be misunderstanding that!
Since it’s unlikely that you’re going to type a word beginning with Tohor, you might want to opt to add that to Substitutions and the full word to the replace with column.
That way you need never think about it or become distracted.
This is the sort of thing that, rather than cluttering up my user dictionary with, I use Espanso for, though Typinator, aText and many other such apps would do as well.
Espanso is slightly geeky to set up, but it’s straightforward to do, and it’s free, it’s good and works well. I name all files starting with the date in the form 20250223, which I’ve set up with the trigger ;dd; I use it to enter regularly used terminal commands, to enter frequently used Chinese character sequences, like 普通话, without having to switch keyboards back-and-forth, and so on (including my signature here!).
So, in your shoes, I’d set up a trigger ;toh to automatically enter Tohorā (with the following space). Since, at least in any of my usage, a ; is never immediately followed by a letter or number, I use it as the first character in triggers… makes them easy to remember and no need to use any modifier key, just lower case letters.
Mark
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I get the impression that Substitutions isn’t a feature on Scrivener for Mac, like on Windows. Or am I mistaken?
The one in the Windows version is a rebuild of the Mac’s global text substitution feature. I would always choose using a full-featured text expansion tool over either, though. They can do a lot more than replacing text as you type.
Personally I would prefer the project auto-complete for this kind of stuff, though. It’s one quick right-click to add to it, as opposed to configuration, and it only triggers in the projects where it matters.
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