Tips for using Mac OS X’s spelling checker.
One of the great things about Mac OS X is its built-in spelling checker. It makes it a lot tougher to spell a word incorrectly.
With Check Spelling While Typing enabled, a dotted red underline appears under each word Mac OS X doesn’t recognize. When faced with this, you have several options:
Manually type in a new spelling for the word.- Use the contextual menu to choose a different word. (I didn’t realize there were so many options for the spelling of my last name!)
- Use the contextual menu to choose Ignore Spelling to remove the red underline.
- Use the contextual menu to choose Learn Spelling to add the word’s current spelling to the Mac OS X user dictionary. This is the option I recommend for a word that’s correctly spelled that you use often.
If you use the Ignore Spelling option, the word’s spelling is ignored in that document only. If you choose Learn Spelling, the word is ignored in all documents. And since Mac OS X’s spelling check feature works in all Apple applications, the word is ignored everywhere that Mac OS X might flag it as a possible error.
So what happens if you accidentally “learn” the incorrect spelling of a word? Simple. Tell Mac OS X to unlearn it.
Right-click (or Control-click) on the word you added to the dictionary in error. Then choose Unlearn Spelling from the contextual menu that appears. The word is immediately flagged as a possible problem again.
And remember, no spelling checker will flag a misspelled word if that spelling spells another word it knows.
Page References
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:
- Checking Spelling & Grammar, pages 230-233
- Using Contextual menus, page 21
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Zac // Jul 16, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I have OS X 10.5.3
I still cannot make FireFox unlearn the word “detnal” which is screwupese for “dental”. BTW as I write this, the word “detnal” is not underlined while FireFox and screwupese are underlined.
I went into TextEdit and saw that it allowed “detnal”. There was NO right click option called “Unlearn Spelling”. What I did was click on “dental”. and it then underlined “detnal” to my surprise.
I then quit firefox and restarted firefox and it still likes “detnal”. It doesn’t underline it.
I went to ~/library/Application Support/Mozilla/en/ and could not find the file persdict.dat
Is there a way to search all files on the computer that contain the string “detnal” in it? There has to be a file somewhere containing “detnal”.
Apple-F on Finder is useless. It says there is no persdict.dat file anywhere and there are not files anywhere on the computer containing “detnal”.
I’m stumped at this point.
2 Zac // Jul 16, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I found the problem. The above directory is incorrect and I meant to say:
~/library/Application Support/Mozilla/en
because I couldn’t find the Firefox folder.
But now I see the firefox folder and eventually found the fabled persdict.dat file. which contained the string “detnal”.
Surely there is a way to search all files, and I really mean ALL FILES on the computer for the string “detnal”.
How do you do that? It there a command in terminal? I remember many years ago using the command “ff” short for “file find” and saving hours and hours of searching through directories with “ls” and “cd”.
Thanks!
Zac
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