Filed under: OS, Tips and tricks, Mac 101
Mac 101: spell check errors
There's a funny post at The Apple Blog today that points out a few typos that give Mac OS X Leopard's built-in spell checker a bit of trouble. For instance, the error "instrucitons" suggests "isntrucitons" as well as "instructions", and "applicaticataion" when "applicatication" is typed instead of "application." There are a few more in their list.
I've noticed that my iPhone always suggests "he'll" when I want to type "hell" (yes, I type "hell" enough to have noticed this).
Of course, this is simple to fix. You can correct these errors for good by right-clicking (or Control-click) on the correct spelling and select "Learn spelling" from the contextual menu. Use this same method to add uncommon words, like surnames, etc.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
James White said 4:22PM on 7-10-2008
Ah, yes, but is there any way to teach your iPhone a new word?
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Kev Orng said 4:29PM on 7-10-2008
I don't suppose you have any hints on how I can make it recognize Canadian spelling?
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Kev Orng said 4:30PM on 7-10-2008
That is, of course, without having to do the "learn spelling" everytime. I just want it fixed throughout.
do a neighbour a favour... :)
Ethan said 5:32AM on 7-11-2008
I had to do this for British spelling. Open up international on system prefs, click on Edit list, and scroll down to Canadian English. Tick it.
Kev Orng said 12:03PM on 7-11-2008
Sweet... it works properly now.
Every time I tried that in the past, it also changed the keyboard to some mysterious "Canadian English" configuration where certain letters and symbols were replaced with accented vowels. But I have a standard keyboard and I've never even seen a physical example of a Canadian English keyboard. It was probably a Canadian French configuration.
Hobbes said 4:36PM on 7-10-2008
I'm running 10.5.4 and none of those words have the same result for me. It works fine here.
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MJ said 4:36PM on 7-10-2008
Okay, big kudos to anyone who can help me figure this out. I want to find a way to delete words from Word or Text Edit's dictionary, so it flags words for manual review, such as "your" and "you're" and "their" and "they're."
Perhaps there's another solution to accomplishing this as well, but the bottom line is I want to find a way to CHECK words that spell check passes over, because they are words located in its dictionary. And no, the Grammar function doesn't always catch these.
Any ideas?
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Ethan said 5:33AM on 7-11-2008
I don't know, but couldn't you just do a search for those words once you’d finished the document?
chris said 12:23AM on 7-11-2008
I think a more important question is how do you UNDO improper spellings that you over wrote the real one with. the "add to dictionary button really should have a "are you sure" dialog (even though I hate those things on windows) I will be checking a word like "liek" and hit add to dictionary by accident, so now it won't check to see if that word is correct in the future, if I misspell it again. I've done this more than once and I wish I knew how to just reset the dictionary.
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Shawn said 7:55AM on 7-11-2008
I wonder if htis works for my iphone. I type my daughters name alll the time...Nadia, and it so kindly wants to correct my spelling to Natzi which kinda ticks me off.
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