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Click the Spelling icon in the toolbar at the top of the Preferences window. Then, select the Checking tab if it isn't already selected. You'll find these options:
Questionable Spelling. When this checkbox is selected, Spell Catcher watches for spelling mistakes-as opposed to capitalization, punctuation, and other kinds of mistakes. You'll probably rarely want to turn off this checkbox-but when the day comes that you want to check a document only for capitalization errors, you'll be ready.
Questionable Capitalization. Turn off this option if you don't want Spell Catcher to notify you about errors in capitalization, such as steve or washington. (See "What's an Error" at the beginning of this chapter for details.)
Missing capital at the beginning of a sentence. Leave this option turned on if you'd like Spell Catcher to warn you when you fail to capitalize the first word of a sentence. (If you check single words or incomplete sentences with this option active, Spell Catcher will suggest you capitalize the first word being checked.)
Repeated Words. Leave this option turned on if you want Spell Catcher to warn you when you type the same word two times in succession.
Questionable Punctuation. This option makes Spell Catcher alert you when it catches the kinds of double punctuation described in "What's an Error," at the beginning of this chapter.
Words that begin with capitals. Suppose you're entering hundreds of names into your address-book program. Since Spell Catcher doesn't recognize most of the names, you find it beeping far too often. If you turn on this option, Spell Catcher will ignore names-that is, words beginning with capitals.
Except at the beginning of a sentence. The "Ignore Words that begin with capitals" option just described could backfire-if taken literally by the software, Spell Catcher would fail to check the first word of every sentence, which is, of course, normally capitalized. This checkbox prevents that situation, ensuring that the first word of every sentence is checked for spelling even if it's capitalized. This setting is disabled if Words that begin with capitals is turned off.
Words that are all UPPERCASE. If you type a lot of acronyms, you could find this a very handy option. The down side of turning on this option is that typographical errors in your acronyms won't be detected. The upside is that you don't have to enter all your acronyms into a Learned Word list.
Words that are mixed case. If you type a lot of words like "TextEdit", "MacOS", or "initWithString", check this box to ignore words with a mix of lower and upper case letters (this doesn't include capitalized words-while technically mixed-case, they shouldn't be lumped into this category).
Words that contain numbers. If you're into computers or science, this one's for you-it makes Spell Catcher ignore words like H20 and 64MB when checking your spelling.
One-letter words. Turn on this option to prevent Spell Catcher from flagging headings like a), b), and c) as spelling errors.
Roman Numerals. This option prevents Spell Catcher from flagging the numerals in terms like Palm VII and Rocky IV as spelling errors.
Internet addresses. For many people, this option alone is worth the purchase of Spell Catcher, since many spelling checkers get tripped-up by URLs. It prevents the program from flagging e-mail and Web-page addresses, such as mike@netwerx.com and http://www.whitehouse.gov/tours, as questionable.
File names. This option tells Spell Catcher not to consider strings with embedded periods as questionable (such as America.mp3).
Ask before making corrections. When selected, Spell Catcher will ask whether you want to paste your changes in after finishing a Check Selection session.
Use plain text only. When selected, Spell Catcher pastes plain text (no styles) into the application.
Try to determine the best language for each paragraph. Turn this option on to have Spell Catcher make an extra initial scan of the text being checked to determine the appropriate language for each paragraph. This is only useful if you write documents that contain text written in different languages.
Shorthand Glossary expansions during Check Selection. When this option is on, Spell Catcher will look for shorthand abbreviations and suggest their expansion while checking a selection.
Automatically capitalize expansions made at the beginning of a sentence. If a shorthand is found at the beginning of a sentence, Spell Catcher will automatically capitalize the expansion.
New paragraphs and lines should always be considered to begin a sentence. When selected, the first word of every line (paragraph) will be considered a capitalization error if it begins with a lower case letter, regardless of any end-of-sentence punctuation (or lack thereof) at the end of the previous paragraph.
Force word wrapping of "wide" paragraphs. Sometimes a document's right margin is set in such a way that words don't wrap to fit the window. Check this box to use different wrapping rules so that you can see all of the text.
Default zoom for text being checked. If the document's text size is very small, you can choose to zoom in (or out for large sizes) so it appears to your liking. This is visual only, and does not affect the size of the text when corrections are pasted back into the document.
Always use “smart” quotes in Spelling suggestions. When selected, Spell Catcher will always smarten quotes found in spelling suggestions.
Always select the first suggestion for all types of errors. Often, the first suggestion in the list is the one you want to use. Check this box to have it automatically selected, so you can just type the shortcut for the Replace command.
Custom Suggestions. If you find that Spell Catcher doesn't suggest the word you want for an error you commonly make, you can enter that suggestion here and it will always appear at or near the top of the suggestions list.
Here you can exercise finer control over the words you've chosen to "Ignore All". You can add them all to a Learned Words file, or remove them if you no longer want them to be considered correct.
This is where you define any customized Date/Time formats you would like to use in shorthand expansions. More information about custom date/time formats can be found in the Shorthands chapter.
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