Spelling Shorcuts

[Steve]

Are there keyboard shortcuts assigned to the buttons in the Mac OSX
Spell Checker (add, change, ignore all) ala Windows?

Thanks.
-steve.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Are there keyboard shortcuts assigned to the buttons in the Mac OSX
Spell Checker (add, change, ignore all) ala Windows?

When you find out let me know. Word used to do it in 5.1a, but you have
all heard me whining on about that before.

The best I can manage is that fiddling with the tab and the up and down
arrow keys inside the spelling correction dialog, you can sometimes
make the desired change without touching the mouse, but it is a
completely unpredicatable mess. You don't always get the highlight
round the selected box, sometimes it is up and sometimes down and
sometimes you find yourself out in the street with the 'undo edit'
lozenge alight which is just as well because it has changed your error
into another even more unlikely mis-spelling.

I went through all the commands in tools->customize->keyboard looking
for something to assign a keyboard shortcut to so I could do a change
all etc. from the keyboard. Not a chance. No luck. Buggered.

<rant>
What were these vegetables on when they sacked the v5 developers?

To tell you the truth, I spell check by hand with a real dictionary.
Spelling checking is close to utterly useless in Office.

Is there a spell checking utility in the whole universe that will tell
you when you should use discrete or discreet? Compliment or complement?

Judging by what you see in print, the answer would seem to be NO!.

And don't get me started on grammar checking!
</rant>

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

<rant>
What were these vegetables on when they sacked the v5 developers?

To tell you the truth, I spell check by hand with a real dictionary.
Spelling checking is close to utterly useless in Office.

Is there a spell checking utility in the whole universe that will tell
you when you should use discrete or discreet? Compliment or complement?

From the built-in "Define" in Entourage and Word:

dis·crete adj
1. completely separate and unconnected
2. used to describe elements or variables that are distinct, unrelated,
and have a finite number of values


dis·creet adj
1. careful to avoid embarrassing or upsetting others
2. careful not to speak about anything that should be secret or
confidential
3. subtle and circumspect, ensuring that no undue attention is attracted
4. modest, and not ostentatious or flashy


com·pli·ment n
1. something said to express praise and approval
2. something done to show respect and honor
3. com·pli·ments expressions of respect and good wishes

vt
1. to say something that expresses praise and approval to somebody
2. to give somebody a gift as a sign of respect or affection
3. to congratulate somebody


com·ple·ment n
1. something that completes or perfects something else
2. either of two things that form a unit
3. a quantity of things or people that is considered complete
4. the predicate part of a sentence that refers to the subject, not
counting the verb
5. the elements of a set that are not included in a particular subset of
that set
6. See complementary angle
7. a set of proteins in the bloodstream that, together with antibodies,
recognize and attack foreign cells such as bacteria
8. an interval that, when added to a given interval, equals an octave

vt
to complete, perfect, or accompany something else pleasingly


Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.


That seems more than adequate to me, if not quite the Oxford English
Dictionary.

Judging by what you see in print, the answer would seem to be NO!.

It seems that some people don't bother to use the tools provided, not that
the tools aren't there.

And don't get me started on grammar checking!

OK, I won't. ;-)

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

From the built-in "Define" in Entourage and Word:

That seems more than adequate to me, if not quite the Oxford English
Dictionary.

It seems that some people don't bother to use the tools provided, not that
the tools aren't there.

OK, I won't. ;-)

Paul, it's not a definition issue....Elliot is complaining re the fact that
if you use discrete when you mean discreet, spellcheck won't catch it. I
find approximately 2 of these a day in a my 16pg college newspaper, of which
7 pages is ads. (phased for fazed, perspective for prospective [student],
the list goes on).

Although, I feel like when I switched from 98 to 2001, Spellcheck started
flagging some of those words as "commonly confused" to make sure that you
checked them, though I've forgotten which ones. Does X still do this?
Perhaps we could get MS to add to the list of commonly confused words to
flag...

Dayo

 

[Elliott Roper]

<long snip of definitions>

Paul, it's not a definition issue....Elliot is complaining re the fact that
if you use discrete when you mean discreet, spellcheck won't catch it. I
find approximately 2 of these a day in a my 16pg college newspaper, of which
7 pages is ads. (phased for fazed, perspective for prospective [student],
the list goes on).

Thanks for leaping in there Dayo. It was *exactly* what I was
complaining about, although Paul has a point when he claims that
people, including me, don't always use the tools that are there.

Although, I feel like when I switched from 98 to 2001, Spellcheck started
flagging some of those words as "commonly confused" to make sure that you
checked them, though I've forgotten which ones. Does X still do this?
Perhaps we could get MS to add to the list of commonly confused words to
flag...

In fact, you would know that your grammar checking was working if it
could detect misuse of 'compliment'.

That would really complement Office, and be a discreet compliment to
its developers. I wouldn't be fazed if it were in the next phase of the
product, but I should keep this request in perspective. They can start
on that when Unicode and long filenames are working properly.

Now! Back to the question class! Pay attention at the back! Where are
all the keyboard shortcuts for speeding your way through spellcheck?

 

[Steve]

I have not understood the keyboard tools available in Panther. I was
hoping that somehow the "full keyboard access" feature overcame this
limitation.

Is MS planning a new version of Office for the Mac anytime soon?

-s

 

[Elliott Roper]

I have not understood the keyboard tools available in Panther. I was
hoping that somehow the "full keyboard access" feature overcame this
limitation.

Only partly. You can set full keyboard access to navigate any menu in
any application. e.g. with the right "full keyboard access" setting,
ctrl-m right right right right right right down down will get you
format paragraph aka cmd-opt-m

Once you get into the twisty maze of tabbed panels in applications like
Office, you are in a tricky land. You can sometimes get what you want,
depending on how you left the tree of tabs from last time you used it.

e.g. cmd-opt-m cmd-k ret *might* set 'keep with next', it might unset
it or it might do nothing at all.

New in Panther is the ability to add something like cmd-opt-m for
format paragraph if it were not already there.

Is MS planning a new version of Office for the Mac anytime soon?

It better hurry up. A MVP, here, once hinted darkly there might be
something around Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath, but it was
hinted some months ago and not a peep since.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Elliot is complaining re the fact that
if you use discrete when you mean discreet, spellcheck won't catch it. I
find approximately 2 of these a day in a my 16pg college newspaper, of which
7 pages is ads. (phased for fazed, perspective for prospective [student],
the list goes on).

In fact, you would know that your grammar checking was working if it
could detect misuse of 'compliment'.

That would really complement Office, and be a discreet compliment to
its developers. I wouldn't be fazed if it were in the next phase of the
product, but I should keep this request in perspective. They can start
on that when Unicode and long filenames are working properly.

Chuckle, chuckle. I really appreciate your careful composition of NG
messages, Elliot.

Dayo

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

<long snip of definitions>

Paul, it's not a definition issue....Elliot is complaining re the fact that
if you use discrete when you mean discreet, spellcheck won't catch it. I
find approximately 2 of these a day in a my 16pg college newspaper, of which
7 pages is ads. (phased for fazed, perspective for prospective [student],
the list goes on).

Thanks for leaping in there Dayo. It was *exactly* what I was
complaining about, although Paul has a point when he claims that
people, including me, don't always use the tools that are there.

Ah, OK. You want a "syntax checker" that understands the context and flags
wrong usage. A good request. It's not strictly speaking a spell-checker's
job, and I wouldn't expect Entourage, for example, to know about such
things. But a sophisticated word processor like Word that comes with a
Grammar checker (not to mention a Thesaurus) - yes, it's reasonable to
expect a syntax-checker as part of it.

In fact, you would know that your grammar checking was working if it
could detect misuse of 'compliment'.

That would really complement Office, and be a discreet compliment to
its developers. I wouldn't be fazed if it were in the next phase of the
product, but I should keep this request in perspective. They can start
on that when Unicode and long filenames are working properly.

Sounds like a deal, and a good sense of priorities.

Now! Back to the question class! Pay attention at the back! Where are
all the keyboard shortcuts for speeding your way through spellcheck?

It needs a Word expert for that. I guess Tools/Customize/Keyboard/All
Commands doesn't help here? Nor the Help?


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Dayo Mitchell said:

You can always create an Exclude Dictionary. I have 'compliment' and
'complement' in mine because for the life of me I can't stop letting the
wrong ones through. The Exclude Dictionary only helps by putting wiggly red
lines under all instances of the words nominated for exclusion, though. You
then have to clarify the usage yourself -- no problem for a masochist...

More details are on (approximately*) page 39 of the notes on the way I use
Word, called "Bend Word to your Will", at
www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/Bend/BendWord.htm.

* [The pagination is different on the downloadable version and on the latest
version that I have, which is due to be uploaded "real soon now". Best to do
a "Find" command for "Dictionary, highlighting".]

As to Microsoft including a syntax checker, I'd be more interested in having
a decent thesaurus that goes beyond an eight-year-old's vocabulary.

--Clive Huggan

* Remove "the" from my address above if you need to send an e-mail to me
directly (although that would be exceptional). Please note that e-mails
with an attachment will be automatically rejected.