Need help with recent problems with Calibre spellcheck

[jerbes]

I am the recipient of a few scanned out-of-print books that are very hard to read as the punctuation is all missing. (eg. Im whos hes shes its theyre theyve weve etc.)

I edited the first two books with no problems. The Calibre spellcheck was able to find all of these contraction problems and I could correct them easily in bulk.

Now I am trying to edit the next book and spellcheck is only flagging proper names and none of the misspelled contractions.

Did I somehow screw up the spellcheck dictionary and inadvertently add in all of the improper contractions?

How would I go about resetting or reloading the default dictionary again?

I'm running the most recent version of Calibre.

Thanks for any help on this.

[eschwartz]

Check the book's language metadata.

Under dictionaries (in preferences) see if you have a custom dictionary containing ignored words.

[BetterRed]

@jerbes - if you have a lot of books like this then you could make use of the API for the function mode search and replace to take care of all the unambiguous contractions (eg theyre, Im etc). That will avoid inadvertent placement of misspelt contractions into a user dictionary - I've done it myself so I know it's easy to do.

But neither it nor the spell checker will help with -- its/it's, well/we'll, cant/can't, wont/won't etc. You need to search for those, read the sentence, and adjust as necessary.

BR

[jerbes]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Check the book's language metadata.

Under dictionaries (in preferences) see if you have a custom dictionary containing ignored words.

I don't know how to find the dictionaries.

When I select Preferences (Calibre 2.27.0), there are no dictionaries to peruse.

I can select from: Interface - Conversion - Import/Export - Sharing - or Advanced.

No dictionaries tabs or sections or options to be found.

[PeterT]

In calibre Edit Book take a look at Edit | Preferences | Editor Settings and there you will find Manage spelling dictionaries.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by PeterT

In calibre Edit Book take a look at Edit | Preferences | Editor Settings and there you will find Manage spelling dictionaries.

@jerbes - fyi: the calibre book-editor and book-viewer are separate self-contained programs that can be used independently of the library manager program (calibre). Hence, their preferences are also separate and accessed from within those programs.

BR

[jerbes]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Check the book's language metadata.

Under dictionaries (in preferences) see if you have a custom dictionary containing ignored words.

That was helpful. I did not know how to get to the dictionary.
There was a custom dictionary there, but it did not contain any misspelled contractions. I deleted it anyway.

The curious thing about all this is that some books that I open up to edit will list all the misspelled contractions and other books will not. The books that don't spot the misspelled contractions when I click the Check Spelling tab will still show them underlined in the HTML editing pane.

Most confusing.

[jerbes]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@jerbes - fyi: the calibre book-editor and book-viewer are separate self-contained programs that can be used independently of the library manager program (calibre). Hence, their preferences are also separate and accessed from within those programs.

BR

That helps and makes more sense to me now.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by jerbes

The curious thing about all this is that some books that I open up to edit will list all the misspelled contractions and other books will not. The books that don't spot the misspelled contractions when I click the Check Spelling tab will still show them underlined in the HTML editing pane.

That's odd - if you uncheck Show only misspelled words at the bottom of the list, do the misspelt contractions (eg theyve) have a tick in the Misspelled column

BR