I am finding that the spell check is not being very helpful.
Even two nearby transposed letters are leaving the spell check baffled. Word was far better.
Any ideas on improving this - or should I post this in ‘wish list?’
Scrivener just uses the standard OS X spell checker the same almost every other Mac application (Word is an exception as Microsoft has built their own custom spell checker). It’s the same as the one used in Mail, Pages, Safari and so on. One thing to check is that it is not set to “Automatic by Language”, because that can lead to less strict spell checking if it thinks some of the misspelled words are valid words in other languages.
I’ve done those checks but it’s the same setup as before, when I used Word, expect that I have now set it to US English. I know I’m not imagining it: since using Scrivener and changing to US English the spell check IQ seems to have plummeted.
So no one is saying you are imagining anything. Because Word uses it’s own dictionary then when you switch to a different app, that uses a different dictionary, you will get naturally different results. As Keith suggested, turning off “Automatic by language” can help. The setting for this can be found in the “Text” settings under “Keyboard” in System Preferences (or open System Preferences and search for “spelling”).
Remember, Word uses its own spellcheck while Scrivener (and most other OS X apps) use the dictionary built-in to OS X. Personally, I have had no problems with OS X’s built-in dictionary and generally find it more reliable than Word, with the extra benefit that words that I add via any app are then automatically recognised in every other app I use – except, of course, Word. 