Spell Check Dictionaries

When Nota Bene checks spelling, the program uses a main dictionary and one or more user dictionaries. When you receive Nota Bene, the main dictionary used by the speller is US.DIC in the Nbwin folder. The Primary User Dictionary GENERAL.SPL is in the Nbwin\Users\Default folder. These are the default dictionaries, but other dictionaries are available, including main dictionaries in over 20 languages.

Main dictionaries and user dictionaries are selected and configured by using the Spell Configure dialog's dictionary tab. See Configure Dictionary Tab.

Main Dictionaries:

The main dictionary that is installed and active when the program is delivered to you is US.DIC, a US English dictionary. UK.DIC, a UK English dictionary, is also installed and can be selected as the main dictionary for English. In addition, dictionaries for many other languages are available. In many cases, there is more than one dictionary available for a given language (e.g., US English and UK English, or French and French Canadian). Main dictionaries are in your Nbwin folder, and they have the extension .DIC. They cannot be edited. For more information on using dictionaries in different languages, see Multilingual Spell Check.

User Dictionaries

User dictionaries are lists of words used by the program to supplement the main dictionary. The spell checker will check both the active main dictionary and any active user dictionaries before flagging a word as questionable. One of the User Dictionaries (usually GENERAL.SPL) is designated as the Primary User Dictionary. When a correctly spelled word is flagged, you can add it to the Primary User Dictionary so that it will not be flagged again. See Edit User Dictionary.

User dictionaries are text files that can be opened as a Nota Bene file. They have the extensions .SPL or .SPX. Any SPL dictionary can be selected as your Primary User Dictionary. SPX cannot be selected as your Primary User Dictionary. SPX dictionaries should not be changed or edited because future updates to the program may overwrite the current dictionaries with improved versions. The SPX dictionaries include:

•ACADEMIC.SPX: Supplemental words in humanities and social sciences

•AUTHORS.SPX: Approximately 1,250 names of authors in humanities and social sciences

•LATIN.SPX: A list of approximately 7,000 Latin words for use as a user dictionary for texts marked as being in Latin.

You can load multiple user dictionaries simultaneously. Only one user dictionary will be designated as the primary user dictionary. This is the dictionary to which any words or replacement pairs would be added. In previous versions of Nota Bene, there was a 64K limit to the size of a user dictionary. This limit was eliminated in version 9, and a user dictionary of 400K has been tested and used successfully.

Replacement Pairs

In addition to containing a list of words that are properly spelled, user dictionaries may contain replacement pairs. Replacement pairs consist of an incorrectly spelled word, and its correctly spelled replacement. A replacement pair can also be an abbreviation and a longer word or phrase that will automatically replace the abbreviation. If Auto Replace is on, the program will automatically replace the first word with the second word or phrase. See Auto Replace Only or Auto Check and Replace. Replacement pairs can be added to your user dictionary. See Customizing Auto Replace.

Language Codes in User Dictionaries

If you are spell checking in a language other than English, you can add words to the Primary User Dictionary in other languages just as you would in English. When adding words through the menus, an LA code will automatically be inserted. This identifies the word with its language and prevents, for example, dont in French from being converted to don’t.

If editing an existing dictionary, you can add LA commands only where the language changes, so that an entire block would be governed by a single LA command (just as in a file). Alternatively, if you add LA commands to the beginning of each line, then the dictionary can be sorted by language.

All words from existing dictionaries are presumed to be in English. To adjust non-English existing dictionaries, you can open them as regular Nota Bene files, and put LA commands in front of each line (if you want to later sort the dictionary using the dialogs), or else simply retain blocks of different language regions (if sorting a dictionary is not important). There is never any need to sort the dictionary in order for it to work; sorting is useful only if you want to edit a dictionary manually or through the dialogs.

For information on entering LA commands, see Multilingual Spell Check.