Best practices for checking spelling

Question

Do you have suggestions on how to work with the spelling status of the wordlist for the whole NT? It would obviously be easier to start with the highest count and move downward. However, I feel I may miss some terms that are spelled only slightly differently when those spellings are split between two ways: a correct spelling and a common misspelling. For this, it might be helpful to sort by word (and thus the spelling based on initial letter) where the two ways will be seen together. Do you have any suggestions for how to proceed?

Answer 1

If you trust that all misspellings are relatively uncommon, you can start by approving common words (with a threshold you set, e.g. 100+, or 25+, or 10+ occurrences). In PT9 this is in the Tools menu of the spelling list.

Also, I found that one good way to catch misspellings is to use the Find Similar Words feature. In the dialog you can specify what are sources of misspellings in your language (these are specified in the box “letters that sound alike”, e.g. p/pp, b/bw, k/g, a/aa, ee/ei, e/é…, and the box “Letters to ignore”, e.g. y, w – whatever letters and/or diacritics tend to be confused in the language under consideration). Obviously, the longer the list of similar pairs is, the more matches will show up in the list of similar words, and some of these may be valid spellings of different words. But still, the feature can be very helpful. For example, it will show word pairs that are spelled almost identically, but with a difference at the start of the word - these pairs won’t be close to each other in the overall list.

Paulus+Kieviet

Comments

Paulus+Kieviet,
Thanks for this advice about finding similar words. I was unaware of this feature. It will an incredible help! Thanks. Can you explain the “letters to ignore” box a little more. I don’t think I quite understand that aspect of the search.
Thanks,
Dave

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These are letters that may be (accidentally) added or omitted, so there is a variation between zero and that letter. For example, in one lg I work with, some words may end either in -ii or -iiy, so I put y in the “to be ignored” box.

Paulus+Kieviet

Answer 2

1. Use the sort order options under the View menu to change how the words are ordered. Sorting by length can reveal interesting words!
2. Use the Tools in the Wordlist - there are valuable options here
   A) Use Approve common words to approve a larger block of words. You can also select a block of words and choose Edit > Set spelling status Correct
   B) Use the Spell Check options - particularly things like “One Character”, but each option has a value. Note that the Tools > Spell Check options display words that are incorrect or unknown. If both words of a pair have been marked correct already then you won’t see them in the list.
   C) Use the tool to see words that are incorrectly joined or split. Since the Wordlist only normally shows whole words it is really useful to see where you accidentally split a word or joined two words.
   D) As Paulus+Kieviet mentioned - use the Similar Words tool
   Note that there are “Guides” for most of these tools that will help lead the way.

Comments

I would add a best practice to this. You should check Biblical Terms/Names before checking spelling. It is easy to approve the spelling of old choices for names unthinkingly. Review or make your choices for the Biblical/Terms/Names and have the wordlist tool open with all books selected. In the wordlist tool, search for wrong alternate spellings and mark them as invalid immediately.

Because old spellings of names look familiar, if you accidentally mark an old (or wrong) spelling of a proper name as valid in the wordlist tool, it can be hard to find later, especially in text not validated by the Biblical Terms Tool, like footnotes, titles, and the glossary.

Answer 3

anon848905 and Shegnada,
Thanks for these tips. Very grateful for the help. I didn’t consider checking Biblical names first. I’ll give that a go first.
Thanks!
Dave