Spellcheck and periods

[mytrivo]

I just updated my Sigil to version 2.4.2. I had been using a version that was quite old, so I'm still figuring out all the adjustments I need to make. I ran a spellcheck on a book and noticed that if the misspelled word is at the end sentence, the period seems to be included as part of the word. It shows up as a separate word (examples attached). Is there a setting somewhere that I need to change to stop this from happening?

[KevinH]

Yes, that is controlled by whether a period is in the WordChars setting in the hunspell dictionary .aff file. In other words whether the dictionary was designed to support proper spellings of abbreviations like Dr., Mr., Mrs., etc. ...

The new US Spelling dictionary included by Sigil does support that. The older one did not.

If this is not what you want, just install your own hunspell en_US dictionary inside the Sigil Preferences folder and it will take precedence over the one in Sigil and be remembered and used from then on out.

[BetterRed]

There are no universal 'proper' spellings of honorific abbreviations, it's determined by which style guide is being used. Last time I checked two widely used guides, they had:

• APA — Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof. — no period if last letter of abbreviation is the last letter of the full word, so Mister, Miss, Doctor, Prof.essor;
• CMS — Mr. Ms. Dr. Prof. — a period after all of them.

But APA and CMS rules aren't set in concrete, so they may have changed. I can't remember if the AP or MLA style guides have any rules relating to this issue… have feeling AP don't have… so up to individual publications.

Outside the US/Canada, similar rules to the APA's are prevalent, but there's also an increasing shift to drop the use of periods after honorific abbreviations entirely. They're useless clutter, no one puts them after qualification abbreviations - MSc, PhD etc.

BR

[KevinH]

Then install a different user en_US hunspell dictionary into Sigil and never have to worry about it again.

They are free, available on all platforms, and even hunspell itself supplies one.

[mytrivo]

Thank you. I'll look into installing a different dictionary.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by mytrivo

Thank you. I'll look into installing a different dictionary.

You can actually grab the en_US dictionary out of your old version of Sigil and copy it to your new Sigil Preferences folder into the hunspell dictionaries folder if that would be easier.