Spell check

Full spell checking and Thesaurus word look-up facilities are a part of do-Organizer Scribe standard features. do-Organizer Scribe comes with an English/American dictionary and the Roget's Thesaurus in its default installation. You are able to spell check any do-Organizer Scribe document using these dictionaries.

More dictionaries are freely available, go to the GemX web site http://www.gemx.com and locate the do-Organizer FAQ page for more information on how to obtain dictionaries for other languages.

Spell Checking

To Spell Check a Document in Scribe, you can do either of the following:

From the main menu, select "Edit/Check Spelling of Note", or

On main Toolbar, click on the icon "Spell check" , or

You could press the keyboard shortcut equivalent: F7 to activate the spell checker.

Please remember, it will start checking from the cursor point onwards or within the selected text (if any is selected). All main options on the spell check window are clear and straight forward. Perhaps I need to comment a bit on the "Add" and "Options"  buttons.

Add:

If there is a word that is not found in the dictionary, then you will see some suggestions listed. Either click on one of the suggestions and click on "Change" or enter the new word in the "Replace with" edit box, then click on the "Change" button. In the case of entering a new word, you can add this new word to your personal dictionary by clicking "Add". Next time you use this new word it will not be marked as a misspelled word. For example, I have been using the word GemX quite often and it's not defined as a valid English word. During one of my spell check sessions, I have added it to my personal dictionary. I no longer get a misspelt error for GemX.

Options:

This button enables you to access "Spelling Options", where you can adjust settings and choose a dictionary. A "Dictionaries" list box will display all the installed dictionaries. Besides setting and selecting a dictionary, you can also add and develop your own custom dictionaries from this window. Click on the "Dictionaries" button to launch a window which displays the list of available custom dictionaries. A new custom dictionary can be added by clicking on the "New" button and naming it on the subsequent pop-up window.

Tip: You can access spelling options at any time without the need to do any spell checking via the main-menu: Edit\Spelling Options and Dictionaries.

Once you have created a custom dictionary and selected it by ticking, all the new words you add will go in this dictionary. If you have not created a custom dictionary, then all the new words you add will go in the default custom dictionary (CUSTOM.DIC). If you wish to change the existing custom dictionary you have created, slow double-click on the dictionary name you want to edit. It will then become editable and you can type the new name.

What about editing your custom dictionary? You may have added wrong words by mistake or some words you may want to remove after a certain time.

On the custom dictionaries list, choose a custom dictionary that you want to edit. Once selected, the "Edit" command will become active. Click on the edit button to launch the custom dictionary edit window below:

Select the words you don't need any longer and hit the Delete button.

As you can see on the screen capture above, custom dictionary edit windows have two more tabs. "Auto Correct Pairs" and "Exclude Words"

Lets start with  "Auto Correct Pairs"

This function can be quite a time saver if used correctly. It would certainly increase your typing speed with less miss-spelt words. Since I have discovered this little handy function, I have been using it heavily. For example, I can enter in my custom dictionary a couple of pairs as you can see on the screen capture above. What they do is simple, but effective. When I type doorg or do, my custom dictionary will automatically changed them into do-Organizer. Rather than typing do-Organizer fully every time, I can just type do. I am sure you see the exciting potential here.

I have used the word do as an example here. I don't think using do is a good idea in real life documents as it's often used as a valid word. For example you may type something like "...do you feel the...." and spell checker would automatically change the word "do" if you defined "do" to be replaced with do-Organizer. Your typing would then read: "...do-Organizer you feel the..."

"Exclude Words" is a bit like your own personal censorship list.

Certain words may be in the dictionary and considered as spelled correctly, but you may not want to use them in some circumstances. In the above screen capture, I have added a couple of sample words. For example, the word dude is in the dictionary and it will not be considered as miss-spelled. Think for a second, you are writing a report for the Managing director about current sales and marketing activities in your organization. You like using some words on a daily basis with friends and colleagues such as the word dude. A report containing something like: "... if all the dudes were able to..." may not go down well with your MD.

To avoid being the victim of habit or your sense of humor, you would have two different custom dictionaries, one for formal writing, which would contain exclude words, and one for friends and people you know well. You'd switch to the appropriate dictionary as and when required.

For quick word spell checking right-click on the miss-spelled word then choose the "Correct Spelling" menu item,  and select one of the suggested words from the list.

Thesaurus

Scribe comes with the English Roget's Thesaurus in its default installation. In certain situations you may need to look up a word you are using for alternatives.

To Look up an Alternate Word: First position your edit cursor inside the word you want to lookup, then you can do either of the following::

From the main menu, select "Edit/Look-up Word in Thesaurus", or

On main Toolbar, click on the icon "Look-up Word in Thesaurus" , or

Press Ctrl+F7, on your keyboard.

For example, if I was looking for an alternative word for "Just" in my note, first I place my cursor on the word "Just" then launch the Thesaurus. I see the word in the context of Truth.

I can also click on "Right" under the "Contexts" list box to look in a slightly different context for the word. I choose "Reasonable" as the word within the context of "Right". Notice the word Reasonable now appears in the "Replace With" box. I can either choose to replace "Just" with the word "Reasonable" or I can look for different words.

While the word "Reasonable" is selected, I click on the "Lookup" button and I get a whole different lot of context words for "Reasonable". I can carry on doing this further as required...

Spelling - As you type...

This is just a little tool to aid your spelling. When it's turned on (Main menu: Edit\Spell as you Type) it will spell check whatever you type in and highlight those words spelt incorrectly by underlining the misspelled words with a red squiggly line. This tool uses the Scribe dictionary. It will only function within the boundaries of the dictionary you are using. For example, if you are using British-English and your loaded dictionary is US-English then certain words may be highlighted as misspelled such as the the British-English spelling "centre" while the US-English spelling for "center" will not be highlighted.

Personally, I don't like using this feature as it disrupts my flow of thought. I normally do my writing first, then spell check the whole thing once I finish. It's a personal thing. You may like using it. Try and see if it tickles your fancy.

Spelling - Auto Correct Words

When switched on (through Edit menu) Auto-Correct tries to correct misspelled common words. An Auto-correct dictionary is included with the Scribe dictionaries. It contains a couple of thousand most commonly used words with their various misspelled versions. As you can imagine it can only auto-correct those words with their misspelled versions included in this Auto-correct dictionary. For example, it may correct the word "About" when misspelled as "Abbout" but not when misspelled as "Aboxt". Because the current Auto-correction dictionary does not contain a misspelled version of "about" in the form "aboxt".

Check out the main menu: Edit\Spelling Options. You'll find through this dialog window, the facility to add your own custom dictionaries including Auto-correction dictionaries. There is also a link button to download additional dictionaries if you are a registered user. Alternatively, registered users can access additional dictionary downloads through main-menu: Help.