Re: [libreoffice-users] Dictionaries.

At 13:57 15/07/2024 -0400, Chris Johnson wrote:
> Right up front, this is a rant. I can't believe I'm the only one 
> with it. I just had to tell LO Writer how to spell "disproven". 
> Seriously people? Admittedly, I do tend to write technical. But come 
> on, "disproven"?

I can't say I'm surprised. It doesn't appear in most dictionaries: 
onelook.com , for example, finds "proven" in twenty dictionaries, but 
"disproven" in no regular dictionaries, only in two places:
o Wordnik describes it as an "[a]lternative irregular form" of "disproved".
o Wiktionary again says it is an "[a]lternative irregular form" of 
"disproved" and suggests it is a synonym for the "archaic, Scots law" 
verdict of "not proven". (But that's wrong, surely?)

Interestingly, OpenOffice's UK dictionary is happy with it, but my 
mail client is objecting!

> I have found, and added, a couple dictionaries, and lots of words.

I'd counsel against that. The more words you include in your spelling 
dictionaries, the more chance there is of misspellings of some 
ordinary words failing to be flagged because they happen to be 
detected as correct spellings of obscure words that you are never 
likely to use. If you misspell "material" as "materiel", it is 
actually unhelpful that your mistake will not be flagged. If I type 
"corespondent", it will not be flagged, but this will almost 
certainly (in my writing) be an error for "correspondent". Did you 
see the University of Texas's glossy commencement brochure for its 
"School of Pubic Affairs"? See https://tinyurl.com/yc8f4cdt . If you 
are unlikely to use the perfectly proper word "pubic", it is helpful 
if it is *not* in your dictionary.

I remember someone on one of these lists constantly bragging about 
how many words he had managed to add to his spelling dictionary, 
evidently oblivious of these niceties. No: bigger is not necessarily 
better, and the ideal spelling dictionary should be the right size, 
not simply as large as possible. As you increase its size, you 
decrease the number of false positives whilst at the same time 
increasing the number of false negatives. False positives are dealt 
with by review, but false negatives will be left as errors.

But if, as you say, you are involved in technical writing, then you 
may well wish to add the specific terms of art in your field.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker  


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