How do I check text for specific spelling issues?

Question

1. From the Tools menu, select Wordlist.
2. From the Tools menu of the Wordlist, point to Spell Check.
3. Select one of the following:
   • All Checks
   • Missing Capitals
   • Single Character Typos
   • Unusual Letter Combinations
   • Diacritic Errors
   • Common Typos
   • Unknown Morphology

The expandable sections below explain each option.

All Checks

Runs all the checks described in the other expandable sections.

Missing Capitals

• Analyzes the capitalization of each word.
• If 75% (or more) of the occurrences of a word are capitalized, this check concludes that all occurrences should be capitalized. If all occurrences are NOT capitalized, the check reports the word as an error.
  [How do I correct the spelling of words with inconsistent capitalization?](http://support.paratext.org/t/how-do-i-correct-the-spelling-of-words-with-inconsistent-capitalization/432)

Single Character Typos

• If there are more than 200 characters in the alphabet for the language of the text, this check does nothing.
• Otherwise, the check looks at each word whose spelling status is Undecided and compares it with words whose spelling status is other than Incorrect. For each word with Undecided spelling status, if changing or eliminating a single letter produces a word whose spelling status is other than Incorrect, the word with Undecided spelling status is a candidate to be reported by this check.
  For each candidate word, a weight is given to the ratio of the occurrences of the Undecided/other-than-Incorrect spelling. If the ratio is 1-to-3 (or less), a weight is also given to the number of occurrences of the Undecided spelling. The total weight is used to determine the likelihood that the word with Undecided spelling status is misspelled.
  For example: In a project, the spelling status of “sat” is set to Correct and the spelling status of “sit” is Undecided. If “sit” (the Undecided spelling) occurs 10 times and “sat” (the other-than-Incorrect spelling) occurs 31 times, “sit” is much more likely to be reported as an error than if the number of occurrences is 100 and 301, respectively.

Unusual Letter Combinations

• Analyzes all sequences of two and three letters.
• A combination of letters is considered unusual if it only occurs in one word AND if that word occurs four or fewer times in the text.

Diacritic Errors

• Looks at each word whose spelling status is Undecided and compares it with words whose spelling status is other than Incorrect. For each word with Undecided spelling status, if the removal or addition of a diacritic produces a word whose spelling status is other than Incorrect, the word with Undecided spelling status is a candidate to be reported by this check. For each candidate word, a weight is given to the ratio of the occurrences of the Undecided/other-than-Incorrect spelling. If the ratio is 1-to-2 (or less), a weight is also given to the number of occurrences of the Undecided spelling. The total weight is used to determine the likelihood that the word with Undecided spelling status is misspelled.

Common Typos

• If you have NOT corrected the spelling of words in the project, this check will do nothing.
• Otherwise, Paratext uses information about the mistakes that you have found and corrected in the past to suggest other words that might be common typographical mistakes.
  For example, if you type "teh" instead of "the", then you notice it and correct it, Paratext can make a guess that other words like "tehm" might be a similar mistake and suggest that you might have meant to type "them".

Unknown Morphology

• Looks at all words which have specified and approved morphology. If a word does not have morphology specified, it is reported as an error if the morphology cannot be guessed based on the approved morphology for other words.

See also:

• How do I find words that Paratext thinks most likely to be misspelled?