I have a lot of unique names in a book and sometimes Scrivener won’t learn them. Sometimes it will. I have searched the forums here and the videos to find a solution. Any help? Here are some examples of words it won’t learn:
Ruther
Kiltar
sandsharks
But if I type: lkjbwerouyansl
it offers to let me learn it.
Any help is appreciated very much!
There are some known issues with 3.3.1 and live spell checking, and one of the symptoms we’re aware of is that the spell checking additions are not always showing up in the contextual menu.
Something to try is to see if the Edit ▸ Spelling and Grammar ▸ Show Spelling and Grammar menu command, which brings up a more traditional dialogue box, works better. If that does work, you may find it preferable to use that approach rather than live spell checking, until this can be sorted out.
As always, it is also worth checking against TextEdit, which uses the same text engine and spell checking as Scrivener. From what we have gathered though, this is one of those rare cases where Scrivener does work differently from the native system without any of the many additions we add on top of it.
Before the latest update I used to be able to right click on a red-dotted/misspelled word and click “Learn” to add it to the dictionary. Now I have to go down to Spelling and Grammer, open that menu, choose learn from there, and then stop the spellcheck. Is there any way to get the previous method back?
Do you see the same issue in TextEdit? Based on other reports, this appears to be a Mac OS issue.
I am having the exact same issue, and it is not happening in TextEdit, so I can confirm that this appears to be a problem with Scrivener. I hope this can get resolved!
No, I’m not having the same issue in TextEdit. It’s right there on the menu.
I’m having the same problem. If you’re a wold-builder, including conlangs, this is a majorly annoying problem lol
Scrivener 3.3.1 macOS Ventura 13.2.1 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro
PS: it seems to be getting confused that some of my invented ‘Learned’ words are actually words from other real languages instead and offers to download whatever corresponding dictionary it thinks the words might belong to.
Like it’s guessing on spellcheck across all possible real languages and if it thinks there might be a match in any of them, it won’t skip this and check its ‘Learned’ library to realize it’s already learned that particular word from the user.
The main issue is going to be Scrivener’s interface with the Mac’s spell check engine. The particulars of how that engine works, such as whether it suggests to download other dictionaries, isn’t directly related to anything we do.
As noted above, have you tried using the dialogue box yet? I’d just use that and turn off the in-your-face spell check highlighting for now, unless you have information to suggest that doesn’t work either.
For all my made up fantasy words, I did the “Learn spelling” action to have Scrivener recognize it as a word. The last couple years, they would occasionally be underlined but it would go away if I copy/pasted the word back in. Now they are consistently getting underlined in red as a spelling error. The “Learn spelling” option no longer appears for these words.
Hi.
Did you reboot your computer, lately?
That’d be something to try.
Update:
I pulled up the “Show Spelling and Grammar” window through the Edit > Spelling and Grammar menu. Even when I clicked “Learn” there for words it didn’t recognize, it still underlined them in red. Double-clicking on a red-underlined word showed then “Unlearn spelling.” So even though the spell check recognizes that these words are in my personal dictionary, it still underlines them in red.
I can turn off the spell check entirely to eliminate the distraction, but I’d rather not lose the ability to easily find typos.
There is some relevant info here, but it doesn’t solve my problem:
https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/macos/spelling-dictionary
And yes, I have restarted my computer recently.
Under Windows that’s a problem I get with French words + contraction. (Lots of, in French.)
I have to type the two-words-as-one in the synopsis panel for then Scrivener to learn it, where the ’ (in the synopsis panel) is straight.
If I don’t, Scrivener learns it, but keeps reporting it as misspelled anyways.
(Perhaps your issue? Or related?)
See if typing your word (not pasting) in the synopsis panel fixes the issue?
Thanks for the suggestion, but that did not work either.
As far as we can ascertain, this is part of an umbrella of issues with live spell checking right now in the current version, that includes:
If you are not running macOS 13, you may find downgrading to the previous version preferable, though personally I would just switch live spell checking off and rely on the dialogue box instead. That seems to me a far less disruptive workaround than doing without all of the many important bug fixes 3.3 contains.
Hi folks - I am writing in Scrivener (standard and screenplay modes) and often use words that are not in the built-in dictionary. Sometimes, when I right-click over the underlined word I get the option for Scrivener to ‘learn’ the word, but other times I do not. Is there any way to force the learn mode? OI am assuming this is not a bug…
This happens to me, too. I just keep right-clicking until the ‘learn’ option returns. At times I give up and try later.
Here’s hoping someone replies with an answer!
To update on my previous post, most of the issues listed have been fixed in the latest version of Scrivener, by removing some of the overrides it was using to fix other problems in the spell check engine, and making it operate pretty much vanilla in terms of how it works with most other software.
The “Learn word” issue does sporadically remain, though at this point there isn’t anything more we can do about it, and will have to hope that its reliability is improved in future versions of macOS.
Ah, okay, so it’s not a simple fix then… I just don’t like seeing red lines all over my work, though I do value the spellink chacker 
Hello folks,
Why is it that there are times, in fact most times, when I right click on a word that I want to add to the dictionary it doesn’t show the ‘learn’ word option?
Is there a shortcut for that or something? What is the best way to add scores if not hundreds of words to the dictionary?
Thank you.