Jennifer Hughes… BRILLIANT. THAT WORKED. I AM SO HAPPY.
Also, importantly, you shared the principle of why this works.
HAPPY INDEED.
A related issue:
I know the word “cant” is a real word but most times I mean “can’t” (cannot). How do I tell the spelling list that this is my #1 priority version of the word?
You can’t or is that you cant.
Really?
Is there no way to set “can’t” as the priority autocorrect rendering for the letters c a n t ?
Dont no ov n e spell chequer that can select based on user preference.
In OS X, you can set up a system-wide autocorrect. Not possible in Windows?
Or using the dont/dint/don’t fix above, can you fudge an autocorrect by changing cantt (or something else that is easy to type) to can’t?
Is it possible to edit/hack the list of words in the main dictionary…removing cant?
Briar Kit,
1, To set up a system wide autocorrect, I highlight the word and then right click to open up a list of options. Unfortunately spelling is not one of them.
If there’s another way to correct the spelling list, I have yet to find it.
- And I dont yet know how to edit the main spelling master list.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Gary
You can set up a substitution to replace “cant” with “can’t” via the “Edit Substitutions” button at the bottom of to Corrections pane in Tools > Options. Be careful with this, though–you may want to add a space on the end to help avoid replacing the sequence “cant” within the middle of a word.
Alternatively you could look into a more sophisticated global tool like AutoHotKey or Breezy to handle corrections like these, which will let you define it as a “whole word” replacement and will work outside of Scrivener as well.
Thanks MM.
Jennifer, that WORKS for me.
I notice the autocorrection only kicks in when I type the next letter after the blank space.
This discussion would not be complete without someone pointing out this alt fix: the method of explicitly typing the apostrophes. Just saying.
-gr
MM, couldn’t you make a substitution that takes the spaces around “can’t” into account? This would avoid changing longer words that include “cant.”
Strange that it took so long for someone to say this. Just type the word correctly, and you don’t need to worry about it. Or, catch it when you read back through. I would assume editing still exists for most writers, right?
Interesting question, Sang.
MM, can a substitution begin with a blank space?
Jennifer, I’m back with a similar issue which isn’t resolved by the above method. Pity, really, because that worked for me earlier.
When “Correct spelling errors as you type” is enabled (ticked):
If I type “dont” in the middle of a sentence, it autocorrects to “Dont”
Wrong.
When “Correct spelling errors as you type” is disabled:
The word “dont” is autocorrected to “don’t”.
Correct.
I’d be grateful for some more of your magic.
Gary
Scrivener shouldn’t be making any spelling corrections at all if that option is disabled, so that may be coming from your substitutions list, e.g. if you have a replacement set up to change “dont” to “don’t”. Check to see if “Enable additional substitutions” is ticked, and click the “Edit Substitutions…” button to see what you have listed there.
I’d also check what’s set up in the personal word list, as that affects the auto-corrections for spelling, and “Dont” may have been added by mistake. If both the substitutions and the spelling auto-corrections are enabled in this configuration, you’d end up with any instance of “dont” being corrected to “Dont” before the substitution kicked in, and once it’s “Dont” it no longer matches “dont”, so it wouldn’t replace.
If that isn’t what’s going on, then there’s probably another program running that’s catching and adjusting the text. Some text expander or global shortcut services have autocorrect options like this, so that’d be a place to look.
Suuuuper tardy response (sorry I missed this!), but yes, it can. You’d want to be sure to include the space at the beginning of the “with” text as well, so you don’t remove the space entirely. That is, you’d want to replace " dont" with " don’t" so you retain the space before the word.
Got it. That worked, Jennifer, thanks.
I noticed in the ‘Edit Substitutions’ list that I’d also added wont → won’t, so I followed your advice for that one too. Turns out it didn’t work because the word wont is not red underlined, so the spelling options don’t show when you type it. And it’s not in my Personal List.
So I simply re-added it to the ‘Edit Substitutions’ list and it’s autocorrecting again. Until there’s a problem, I’ll let sleeping dogs lie.
Again, thanks.
While we’re having this discussion, could I share another wrinkle.
The word significant.
First, with nothing relevant in Edit Substitutions:
With “Correct spelling errors as you type” disabled:
cant —> cant (which is WRONG)
significant —> significant
With “Correct spelling errors as you type” enabled:
cant —> cant (which is WRONG)
significant —> significant
Now, let’s add an item [ cant → can’t ] to the Edit Substitutions function:
With “Correct spelling errors as you type” enabled:
cant —> can’t
significant —> significan’t (which is WRONG)
With “Correct spelling errors as you type” disabled:
cant —> can’t
significant —> significan’t (which is WRONG)
SO… it seems to me that we have a choice of errors.
Either “can’t” (meaning cannot) is always wrong.
Or every word with the 4 letters “cant” are always wrong. Significan’t. Can’tankerous. Can’tata. Descan’t. Recan’t.
Or is there something else I can learn about driving the wondrous Scrivener?
First off, a minor but significant ( 
) point: “cant” and “wont” are both English words, so there’s no reason for them to be flagged by the spellcheck. That’s not an error. “He was wont to believe their political cant.” No spelling errors.
So, this needs the substitutions, and is an example of why you’d want to include spaces around the word to isolate the replacement to a whole word, rather than a piece of a word. Thus, replace " cant " with " can’t ". It’s not perfect, I realise, since if you have a comma or other punctuation after or before the word it’s not going to get caught, but these are just basic substitutions. If you regularly need something more complex, I’d encourage you to look for software specifically for that, which could work outside of Scrivener as well.
Thanks, MM.
Mine was turning dont into Dont. After some futzing, I discovered a workaround.
Right click the word in question before hitting the space bar. You should see the offending replacement at the top of the substitution list. With any luck, what you really want it to be will be there. Choose it and hit the space bar.
Now go to Options, Corrections, Edit Substitutions. Set up your original mistype or shorthand into the actual word you want to display. Don’t forget to check the box!
Voilà! Dint (or Dont) becomes don’t.
Don’t ask me why it works.