Sorry if this is a noob question. I’ve perused the forums and didn’t find relevant posts.
I’m very confused about how Scrivener’s spell-checking works:
I accidentally told Scrivener to “Learn” a misspelled word in the “Spelling and Grammar” dialog resulting from hitting cmd-:. (The word is “donlt.” I’m a lousy typist. It’s supposed to be “don’t.”) I don’t know how to tell Scrivener to unlearn the misspelled word so that the misspelling is flagged.
One post I saw suggested as a solution removing words from the ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary file, but “donlt” is not in the file.
In my LocalDictionary file, there are only two entries: “saleability” and “saleable.” I don’t recall adding these in OS X’s “Symbol and Text Substitution” panel under “Language & Text” in “System Preferences” – which is where I assume that Scrivener (and all apps that tie into the system-wide spelling function) would source the misspelled words and corrections, given that Scrivener uses the OS X spell-check capability. In addition, all of the misspellings and substitutions that I’ve laboriously entered in this panel do not appear in my LocalDictionary file, and Scrivener does not correct them. And, “saleable” and “saleability” are not in the list of “Symbol and Text Substitutions.”
Am I wrong in thinking that spell checking and substitution of misspelled words with a correction are the same? Substitution doesn’t happen in Scrivener.
So, either I am very confused and/or ignorant (well, this is a certainty), or there’s something wrong with my machine somewhere, or both. I’m a bit of a Mac noob, too.
I’m often confused about it myself. It’s all handled at the system level and is a bit of a black box. OS X decides where to store the words, how to learn or unlearn them, when words get underlined and corrected and so on.
I believe that auto-correction does use the words from the spelling dictionary, yes, although Scrivener doesn’t hook into auto-correction just yet (it will in 2.0).
To fix your problem of unlearning the word “donIt” (and yes, it is a little unintuitive, but it’s the only way I’ve found how to do it using the OS X spelling system):
In your text, type “donIt” once more.
Select this misspelled word.
Ctrl-click on it.
Now, instead of “Learn Spelling”, you should see “Unlearn Spelling”. Choose that to have the word forgotten by the spell-checker.
This only works on Leopard or above - Tiger didn’t have an “Unlearn Spelling” feature available, so I’m afraid if you’re on Tiger it may be more difficult.
Keithvin - How do I change the dictionary? My computer refuses to let me talk English since I upgraded my hard drive, and doesn’t recognise, for instance ‘squalour’ as a word. (I thought I’d posted this question but can’t find it; apologies if it was posted already.)
You can change it by going to Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar. There’s a pop-up button in the spelling panel that appears which lets you choose your language.
Best,
Keith
Unfortunately, I don’t get an option to “Unlearn Spelling” in the context menu–see the attached screen shot fragments.
I enabled “Correct Spelling Automatically,” and “Replace Text Automically” disappeared from the menu. One instance of “donlt” was corrected to “don’t,” but another instance was not. I can use “Replace with ‘don’t’” to correct each instance individually, but no instance is flagged with a red dotted underline signifying a misspelling. It seems that “donlt” is still being remembered by Scrivener (or by OS X) as a valid word.
I used this procedure to “Unlearn” “donlt” in Scrivener:
Quit Scrivener.
Run System Preferences.
Go to the “Text” panel in Language and Text.
Disable (uncheck) the “On” checkbox for “donlt” in the “Symbols and Text Substitution” list.
Quit System Preferences.
Run Scrivener.
Select “donlt” and control-click on the word.
“Unlearn” is now available in the context menu. Click it! “donlt” is now flagged with the dotted red underline that signifies a misspelled word in Scrivener.
Re-enable the “On” checkbox for “donlt” in the substitution list in System Preferences so that apps that use OS x’s substitution list will pick it up.
Very much looking forward to automatic substitutions in Scrivener 2.0.
shortguy - sorry for leaving you hanging, I was away for the weekend. Glad you got it sorted though!
Michael - there is no difference. “Correct Spelling Automatically” is currently only available in the contextual menu, and is placed there by Apple whether I like it or not. In 2.0 I have taken control of the contextual menus and this option is now available as a preference, that’s all. Which is a fancy way of saying that I hadn’t even noticed that option had snuck into the contextual menu. So yes, it is there already, but only as a side effect of the 10.6 update not as a built-in feature.
I had the same problem with the “Unlearn Spelling” option not appearing, but shortguy’s solution above didn’t work for me. The word in question wasn’t in the System Preferences text pane, presumably because of changes in the OS since then.
I’m using Scrivener 2.4.1 on an Intel-based iMac running OS X 10.8.4.
The problem was with only this one word – all other words had the “Unlearn Spelling” option available, but not this one. I was tempted to just not worry about it, except that it represents a change in the spelling of a character’s name. So if both spellings were “correct,” it would be harder to ensure the manuscript goes out with the new spelling in every instance.
Now I’m not a full-on hacker, but I don’t mind rolling up my sleeves and getting under the hood. So I did a Spotlight search for the old spelling with “system files - are included” turned on. In (home directory) > Library > Spelling there’s a system file called “en.” I opened that in a text editor and lo, there was my old name spelling. Deleted it, saved the file, and after a restart the old spelling was no longer recognized as correct.
This conversation was very helpful in pointing me toward a system file rather than a Scrivener preference. I share the story only for future reference, in case anyone ever comes up against this again.
It’s all handled at the system level and is a bit of a black box. OS X decides where to store the words, how to learn or unlearn them, when words get underlined and corrected and so on.
