Spell Check Skips Single-Letter Words

[Dave]

We currently use a mix of MS Word 97, 2000 and 2002 and spell check fails to catch single letters, other than "A", "a", or "I", which are not normally valid as words.

This often occurs when a user omits one letter of a two-letter word or inadvertently inserts a space after the first letter of a word or prior to the last letter of a word. If the truncated word, absent the single letter that is stranded, forms a valid word (or is a single letter, itself) the spell checker will not alert the user to the presence of that misspelling.

I have created an exception list containing all possible single letters other than "A", "a", and "I", however spell check still skips over single letters.

While single letters have their place in outlining, they would generally be attached to some punctuation or otherwise differentiated from a single letter standing alone in the midst of a sentence. Ironically, spell check picks up on a lower-case "i" as being misspelled!

Any assistance would be appreciated!

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

We currently use a mix of MS Word 97, 2000 and 2002 and spell check
fails to catch single letters, other than "A", "a", or "I", which are
not normally valid as words.

Yes it skips all single letter words, because Word doesn't allow the
spell-checker to see any document context. Therefore it doesn't know when
these letter occurrences are useful or not. The grammar checker may catch
some of these: however the English proofing tools from Word 97 were licensed
rather than Microsoft written so you'll see larger differences in behaviour
than elsewhere.

--
Mike Williams - Office MVP http://www.mvps.org/faq/

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[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

Interesting. Since each letter is in the dictionary (as a noun), I'm sure
this is intentional. You'll notice that the grammer checker flags:

"He j to the store.", but not "This is the letter j." which makes sense
because J is a noun, not a verb.

If you want, you can create an Autocorrect rule. Correct each single letter
to a mispelled word. For instance, create a rule which converts every
isolated "j" to "jERROR".

Thanks,

Eric Lawrence
Program Manager
Assistance and Worldwide Services

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

We currently use a mix of MS Word 97, 2000 and 2002 and spell check fails

to catch single letters, other than "A", "a", or "I", which are not normally
valid as words.

This often occurs when a user omits one letter of a two-letter word or

inadvertently inserts a space after the first letter of a word or prior to
the last letter of a word. If the truncated word, absent the single letter
that is stranded, forms a valid word (or is a single letter, itself) the
spell checker will not alert the user to the presence of that misspelling.

I have created an exception list containing all possible single letters

other than "A", "a", and "I", however spell check still skips over single
letters.

While single letters have their place in outlining, they would generally

be attached to some punctuation or otherwise differentiated from a single
letter standing alone in the midst of a sentence. Ironically, spell check
picks up on a lower-case "i" as being misspelled!

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

Interesting. Since each letter is in the dictionary (as a noun), I'm
sure this is intentional. You'll notice that the grammer checker
flags:

"He j to the store.", but not "This is the letter j." which makes
sense because J is a noun, not a verb.

If you want, you can create an Autocorrect rule. Correct each single
letter to a mispelled word. For instance, create a rule which
converts every isolated "j" to "jERROR".

Intentional, yes, but not because they are in the dictionary. It's to get
around constructions like. "He didn't like the behaviour of the spellchecker
because it (a) doesn't understand mult-word entities; (b) has text broken
differently by different applications; and (c) conflicts with the
grammar-checker on many hyphenated terms."

....and "misspelled" has a double-s

 

[Eric Lawrence [MSFT]]

Just checking to see who's paying attention.

Intentional, yes, but not because they are in the dictionary. It's to get
around constructions like. "He didn't like the behaviour of the spellchecker
because it (a) doesn't understand mult-word entities; (b) has text broken
differently by different applications; and (c) conflicts with the
grammar-checker on many hyphenated terms."

...and "misspelled" has a double-s