Hey,
I am having an issue with spell check not responding to ‘Learn Spelling and Ignore Spelling’.
What happens is when a reoccurring word that is ‘slang’ for example, is highlighted in Spell Check and I mark it as ‘Learn or Ignore’ the word sometimes still shows up in the manuscript the next time I open it.
SEQUENCE: Slang word is highlighted by Spell Check > I mark as Learn Spelling > save document > exit Scrivener > open Scrivener document > word that I marked as Learn appears with Spell Check highlight again. NOTE: this only happens occasionally.
On the matter of using “Ignore”, you are describing expected behaviour. The use for that is when you want to skip over a word that you know is contextually correct, but don’t want it permanently added to the dictionary, like an ambiguous proper noun or maybe someone else’s misspelling in a quotation. Those kinds of skips will vanish when restarting the software.
“Learn” on the other hand should definitely be putting this word into a file somewhere. This is a Mac level troubleshooting thing here—so I can only suggest places to look and things to try, as I’m not an expert at it. But for how my system is set up (and this may be language dependent), if I open “~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary” in a plain-text editor, I can see the words that I’ve added in the past. And if I close that file, “Learn” a new one in the GUI of a Mac program (Scrivener, TextEdit, Safari, whatever, it’s all the same), then when I reopen the file it shows up somewhere in the file (it looks to be alphabetically organised).
So why that wouldn’t be working, I don’t know—like I say, that’s well into Mac troubleshooting at that point. If it never worked than I’d look into broken file permissions on the folder or spell check file itself, but as for unreliable results, that’s a puzzling one. The answer is probably that all of this way more complicated than it seems to be—as is often the case with Apple preference files. They sometimes make things look simple in your Library folder, but with a few experiments you can confirm that these text files are almost more like a backup than the real deal.
Actually, I am having the same, or a very similar, problem.
I am on a Mac, and “Learn Spelling” seems to have stopped working, after maybe only 1 addition.
I am using proper names and slang that Scrivener doesn’t know, and I cannot get “Learn Spelling” to stop giving me a spelling error notice (the dotted red line underneath).
However, I “taught” it another name the other day.
Unlike some other reports with this kind of problem, I am definitely seeing both options of “Learn Spelling,” both when I right-click on the word, or when I use the pull-down menu and go to Spelling. And I am not using “Ignore,” definitely using “Learn.”
I can click all “Learn” day long; I can quit Scrivener and restart; but it does not learn the word. I am just at the beginning of a manuscript and I can foresee this could rapidly become somewhat maddening. Thoughts?
I am not a power Mac user, so very reluctant to go poking around in Library files. Also, if it’s any help, I tried getting MS Word to learn the words, and it did.
If I remember correctly, MS Word does not use the system spell check, but has its own. Scrivener, on the other hand, uses the spell checker (and the rest of the text facilities) provided by the system software. You might, therefore, need to ask for advice on a Mac forum.
I checked my laptop copy (sharing between desktop & laptop), and when I used the feature on the marked words, it performed the “Learn spelling” just fine; error mark goes away.
But on my desktop those words are still flagged as misspelled, and still nothing happens when I try to use “Learn spelling.”
So perhaps it’s just my older OS on my desktop, and Scrivener 3.1.5 does not get along with Mac High Sierra.
Laptop is totally current. Problem solved, maybe.
Thanks.
ps: regarding my earlier post - I figured that MS Word would have a different dictionary/spelling location, just thought I would try it.