Love the program but I pretty much started using it out of the box with no changes to the options in corrections.
I am getting pretty deep into some writing, and I will write then edit a chapter, etc., then come back the next day or two, and I notice some odd text changes.
At first, I thought it was me, but then I started seeing this so many times that I now think it is the program do some sort of auto correct.
One Example might be words with missing syllables IE all of a sudden parts of a words are missing and I have seen these multiple times, not a lot but just here and there.
Words would be respelled sometimes to mean something else; IE find or found might end up as fond, etc.
There were others too but cant recollect them now.
I am getting ready to do a major edit and don’t want to go through ti only to find more problems later.
I have turned off everything in corrections except “check spelling as you type”
I am also using whitesmoke one paragraph at a time then reread check after it does its thing.
It is a bit flaky which is annoying.
I think “check spelling as you type” is actually the setting that you need to turn off. With that on, it will continue to “fix” what you’re typing. I’m not sure what the source of the problems that you’re reporting is, but if you turn that off they should at least stop occurring, if it is in fact an auto-correct problem.
I was editing just now, and I have run into several gaps. Like there should be several words there but all that is existing is the first letter of the first word. I found this twice in 2 chapters.
Also maybe 4-5 words that are missing except the first letter.
I worked on these two chapters last night, and now I think it is whitesmoke. I made one correction and when I applied it and I saw it wipe out several words and just leave the first letter.
Hello Tammons,
I have used scrivener awhile and have never experienced an error like the one you are reporting. As such, it would seem to be Whitesmoke that is playing up. You might want to try ProWritingAid as it now works well with scrivener and is easy to use. I have no connection with the program, but it works really well for me as it can integrate quite well with the Scrivener. I have no connection to them but I use both programs and they work together very well. There is a free trial at the moment.
I have had similar issues and they do seem to occur because of auto correct. However, I’m not using Whitesmoke so this definitely occurs with Scrivener alone.What happens to me is if I mistype or misspell a word Scrivener will make a decision as to what I might have meant and often when it’s wrong, it’s very wrong––changing the meaning of the entire phrase sometimes to the point that I’m not sure what my original sentence was. So, I guess it’s a choice between my bad spelling or Scrivener’s kooky word inventions…I don’t like the choice. I suppose learning to spell ( at my very advanced age) would not be so bad, but if this could be fixed it would be so much nicer.
As I said I caught WhiteSmoke deleting text upon clicking apply, but I also noticed in one document that later that after having not worked on it for a while that some of the text was apparently changed as you said Margot, and I know it was not like that before. Mostly from that what I have seen I will get 3-4 words combined into one garbled string of text beginning with the correct first letter about 8-12 characters long and of course by then I have a hard time remembering what they were. It happened to me last night.
I was in error earlier when I said that “Check spelling as you type” was the setting to turn off. That will merely mark unrecognized words with a red squiggly underline if it’s turned on; it won’t change anything. “Correct spelling errors as you type” is the one that will actually replace what you have typed with something else.
But tammons, having “Correct spelling…” turned on definitely should not combine multiple words into one string of text, so I doubt that Scrivener as such is to blame for that. I know nothing about WhiteSmoke or whether it could do such a thing.
Margot, I know what you mean about Scrivener making some startling corrections. I find it easier to leave “Correct spelling errors as you type” turned off (in Tools > Options > Corrections), and then do a spell check after finishing the document (Tools > Spelling; or Ctrl+G, S). It can be a bit tedious to go through a long document with many misspellings, but you will be given choices for the misspelled words, rather than the program selecting one for you; and this will also give you the chance to add words that you actually need to the spelling dictionary.