Spelling and Autocorrection Checks
There are two subsystems in Arbortext Editor that correct misspelled words :
• Spelling check
The spelling check feature is driven by a language-specific dictionary of all known words in your language, as well as by a user dictionary to which you can add words and misspelling pairs.
◦ Words in the user dictionary are not flagged as misspellings
◦ A misspelling pair in a user dictionary consists of two words, expressed as a;b.
a is a misspelled word and b is a possible replacement.
Misspelling pairs are only used during spelling correction. They are separate from the words in autocorrect.xlf that are used by the autocorrection feature.
• Autocorrection
The autocorrection feature is driven by the file autocorrect.xlf, which contains pairs of words.
The first word in each pair is a common misspelling, the second is the correct spelling.
Arbortext Editor can support multiple language versions of an autocorrect.xlf file.
Words entered into a document are processed for spell checking in this order:
1. The word is passed to the autocorrection feature. It looks in autocorrect.xlf to see if the word is a misspelling. If so, it replaces the word with the correct spelling.
2. The word is passed to the spelling checker. If the word is a misspelling, it is underlined with a wavy red line.
3. The spelling checker evaluates the new word and the words around it. If it sees a grammatical error, the offending word or words are underlined with a wavy green line.
Apart from this processing, which underlines spelling and grammatical errors, the spelling checker only runs when invoked. The check can be invoked in two ways:
• The spell command
• The Spelling icon on the toolbar (which invokes the spell command)
The spelling checker considers each word in the document or, by default, in the selected region of the document. For each word:
• if the word is in the master dictionary, it is ignored as correctly spelled
• if the word is in the user dictionary, it is ignored as correctly spelled
• if the word is not in the master or user dictionary, the spelling checker displays a dialog that suggests up to eight possible replacements for the misspelled word.
If the word appears as the left half of a misspelling pair in the user dictionary, the right half of the misspelling pair is offered as one of the suggested spellings.