Spelling / Numbers / Punctuation interaction

Question

We have a spelling error pattern that seems like there should be an easier way to find them for us to correct, but the interaction of Spelling status with Number settings and Punctuation inventory is making this error elusive.

We are spelling cardinal numbers with the pattern 1pla and not 1-pla. But we are not able to easily find all the places to correct the 1-pla pattern.

Here are our number settings (indicating the cardinal number pattern within the ordinal number field since that is the field where any suffix on a numeral is specified)…

In the Wordlist, only pla appears as a word and not the correctly spelled 1pla or the incorrectly spelled 1-pla. In addition, when a word is spelled out and we mark it as incorrect in order to change it to the 1pla pattern, an error message informs us that 1pla is not a valid word. But that’s how ordinal numbers are allowed in the Number Settings.

In the Character inventory the hyphen is marked as a valid character because it is a valid character in other words.

The hyphen is also marked as a valid character in the Punctuation inventory because it is a valid character in certain contexts.

In Language Settings, nothing is defined for word-medial punctuation.

It seems like there should be an easy way to find all the instances of words in the pattern of 1-pla and mark them as incorrect and change them to 1pla, but I don’t see a way.

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Answer 1

The other respondents have given you the best ways to change all the errors you currently have … but they haven’t answered your question as to why these and any future errors are not being flagged based on the choices in the Number Settings dialog box: the answer is that these choices do not generate spelling errors.

Instead, they are used for the Numbers check: Checking menu ➢ Run Basic Checks…; tick (check) the box next to Numbers (untick the other boxes), choose the range of books/chapters you want to check, and click OK.

You should get a list of numbers that don’t match the patterns you chose as valid.

Extra:

You should probably remove “st nd rd th” from the “Ordinal” settings.

As you point out, “ordinal” is a rather Anglo-centric name for this field. One of the languages I work with has a suffix for “count numbers” – like “one of …”, “two of …”, etc.

You might consider changing the hyphen characters in Initial punctuation and Medial punctuation to a minus (−) (U+2212) and an en dash (–) (U+2013), respectively, since those are the standards used by many publishers – particularly for minus. Then you’d need to include them on your keyboard, e.g. on RightAlt+hyphen. This is what I’ve done for the projects I support – you can see that I’m happily typing en dashes as punctuation in this post .

On the other hand, the traditional way to handle nice formatting is at publication time.

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Answer 2

Have you tried using RegExPal? If that doesn’t let you search for
“1-pla” or perhaps “1-pla”, if you temporarily remove the hyphens
from the punctuation in this Number Settings box can you then use
the Replace dialog?

  I haven't checked these suggestions out, but I would try them if

I had this problem.

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Comments

One of these days, I’ll encounter enough problems where RegExPal would be helpful that I’ll finally venture into that area and learn to use it.

Temporarily “removing” the hyphens from the punctuation in the Number Settings box helped, but I also had to do two other things. I had to add the hyphen as word-medial punctuation in the Language Settings, and I had to add all the numerals as alphabetic characters in the Language Settings. Now when I search for 1-pla in the Wordlist, it is found, and I can mark it as incorrect and add the correct spelling as 1pla.

Another solution I found was that I can use Find and Replace to look for -pla at the end of words and replace with pla. I could do that without changing those settings above. Maybe that would be better, because now I’m not sure if the Numbers check will work now that the numerals are defined as alphabetic characters.

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I realise that RegExPal is certainly not a tool for everyone, and it takes “a little bit more than average” skill to use regular expressions. But, you can actually use regular expressions in the normal Paratext Find… dialog box without having to venture into using RegExPal itself.
To do so, just put regex: on the front of the pattern to be searched for. Note that you cannot use regex in the replace box.

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Ben+Pehrson:

Temporarily “removing” the hyphens from the punctuation in the Number Settings box helped, but I also had to do two other things. I had to add the hyphen as word-medial punctuation in the Language Settings, and I had to add all the numerals as alphabetic characters in the Language Settings. Now when I search for 1-pla in the Wordlist, it is found, and I can mark it as incorrect and add the correct spelling as 1pla .

Another solution I found was that I can use Find and Replace to look for -pla at the end of words and replace with pla . I could do that without changing those settings above. Maybe that would be better, because now I’m not sure if the Numbers check will work now that the numerals are defined as alphabetic characters.

I don’t think these changes that you’ve made are recommended … though I think the Numbers check will still work, as I believe it ignores the Alphabetic Characters table, and checks all the numbers it finds anyway … though I might be wrong!

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Answer 3

I think you could find all the N-pla words by doing a search for -pla. Maybe search for -pla and replace with pla.

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Answer 4

In the regular find box put:
regex:\d+-pla\b

You can also do a replace
Find:
regex:(?<=\d+)-pla\b
Replace:
pla

I would also remove the English ordinal suffixes from your Number settings.

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