Pick of the Week - Nov 10 [Show all picks]
Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement
Submit Hint • Search • The Forums • Links • Stats • Polls • FAQ • Headlines • RSS
12,000 hints and counting!

Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary System
Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 10:33AM PDT • Contributed by: Pedro Estarque
If you ever accidently clicked "Learn" in the spelling window of any Cocoa app, your dictionary will not recognize the wrong word the next time you repeat your mistake. If you want to make it "unlearn" the word, start by opening the folder ~/Library -> Spelling. You may find several files, one for each dictionary you use e.g.: en for English, Multilingual, pt_BR for Brazilian Portuguese, etc.

If you open one of these files in TextEdit or BBEdit, you will see that the words are not separated at all, and for some reason, pico will only recognize the first word added. I suggest using emacs in the Terminal, which separates each entrance by a ^@ symbol. You should type something like this: 
emacs ~/Library/Spelling/en
Its also a nice way to add lots words using copy/paste.
    •    
  • Currently 0.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (0 votes cast)  
[11,335 views]  

Hint Options


Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary | 17 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary' hint
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Emacs basics
Authored by: paulio on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 11:33AM PDT
WoW! How many normal people know anything about Emacs? Bare minimum knowledge:

<ctrl-s> starts incremental search mode
arrow keys stop the mode

<ctrl-x><ctrl-s><ctrl-x><ctrl-c> saves and exits
<ctrl-x><ctrl-c> exits without saving

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: pascalpp on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 11:56AM PDT
I was excited to see this hint, as I have accidentally added the word 'i' to my dictionary, and I wanted to remove it so the speller would remind me to capitalize my I's... but there's no Spelling directory in my home library. Any idea where else the user dictionary could live?

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: pascalpp on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 3:06PM PDT
Hmm. I just added a nonsense word to the dictionary and then the directory ~/Library/Spelling shows up. So I guess I never added the word 'i' to my dictionary; the word 'i' just isn't flagged by default by the built-in speller. I wonder if there's a way to make it get flagged as a misspelling?

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: RickoKid on Sun, Aug 15 2004 at 10:57PM PDT
I don't think the spell checker will pick up any single letters.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: fbitterlich on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 12:07PM PDT
You can actually open it in BBEdit, just make sure you enable the "Show invisible characters" option. The word separator shows up as a red "¿" character.

[ Reply to This | # ]
BBEdit
Authored by: Pedro Estarque on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 3:33PM PDT
Yes you are write, Edit/Text options.../Show Invisibles
much cleaner then emacs

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: subscriber3 on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 2:06PM PDT
for those not up to emacs, and who don't have BBEdit, there is an option to see the invisibles in the freeware app:

iText

http://members.aol.com/iText/pad_file.htm

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: osxpounder on Fri, Aug 13 2004 at 11:30AM PDT
That's kind of you; thanks for the link.

---
--
osxpounder

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: dcoyle on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 4:22PM PDT
Smultron also shows invisible characters.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: jeremyp on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 5:28PM PDT
vi ~/Library/en

Accept no substitute

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: zzen on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 7:09PM PDT
Right brother!!!
Preach it to those lowly sinners!

[ Reply to This | # ]
Remove accidental additions to the spelling dictionary
Authored by: Arif on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 8:52PM PDT
well vi ~/Library/en did *censored* all in 10.2.8 except for showing a few ~

[ Reply to This | # ]
The better answer
Authored by: paulio on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 10:13PM PDT
This is all way too complicated. There is a better answer.

The better way is to remove the accidently learned word the way Apple intended. There is a mechanism for doing this already in place.

In Mail, for example, pull down Edit | Spelling | Spelling... Among the fields available, there is one field in which it is possible to type a word. Type in the accidently learned word and click on the Forget button.

That's all. Easy.

[ Reply to This | # ]
The better answer
Authored by: mudpup on Thu, Aug 12 2004 at 11:06PM PDT

Where is the fun in that?


[ Reply to This | # ]
The better answer
Authored by: osxpounder on Fri, Aug 13 2004 at 11:32AM PDT
Fantastic. Thanks for pointing that out; I'd rather do it that way, myself.

---
--
osxpounder

[ Reply to This | # ]
The better answer
Authored by: subscriber3 on Fri, Aug 13 2004 at 12:02PM PDT
this is good for removing a single word you know is misspelled.

but it doesn't allow you to look for misspelled words.

[ Reply to This | # ]
The better answer
Authored by: d_h on Sat, Aug 14 2004 at 2:07AM PDT
Another reason for not editing the spelling dictionaries directly is that you seem to have to log out to get the changes recognised.

A while ago I was looking at loading a custom word list in all at once, the trouble was the delimiter was a character the machine couldn't show and I couldn't type. In the end I think I used a python script to find out the ascii value of the character and write it in with a script.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Search

Advanced

From our Sponsor...

User Functions





Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?

What's New:

Hints

3 new Hints in the last 24 hours

Comments last 2 days


Links last 2 weeks

No recent new links

What's New in the Forums?

The Editor's Corner...

Here are some of my (robg) other projects...

•  The Robservatory
My blog - Macs, tech, etc.
•  Mac OS X Power Hound
The best of Hints in print
•  Inside iWork
An iWork training DVD
•  Macworld
Column, features, online...

Hints by Topic

 

News from Macworld

The macosxhints Poll

iPad_poll_#1

Which, if any, model of iPad will you be buying?

  •  None of them
  •  16GB: Wifi [$499]
  •  16GB: Wifi + 3G [$629]
  •  32GB: Wifi [$599]
  •  32GB: Wifi + 3G [$729]
  •  64GB: Wifi [$699]
  •  64GB: Wifi + 3G [$829]
  •  Waiting for next generation
This poll has 0 more questions.
Results
Other polls | 7,009 votes | 76 comments
Copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC (Privacy Policy) Contact Us
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.

Visit other IDG sites:


Powered by Geeklog Created this page in 0.42 seconds