Is there any way to make gedit recognize words with apostrophes when spellchecking? It always tells me that words like didn't and couldn't are misspelled.

Many spellcheckers have a learn feature. If your spellchecker does then you can add the apostrophe words to the dictionary the next time your spellchecker rejects them.

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Steve Stites

Well, it only checks the part in front of the apostrophe. For example, it says that "can't" isn't misspelled, because "can" is a word. But it says that "didn't" is misspelled, because "didn" isn't a word. I could add "didn" to the dictionary, but it's not a word, and it shouldn't be in the dictionary. Is there a way to make it check the whole word, and not just stop at the apostrophe?

36227 gedit doesn't handle apostrophes correctly when spell-checking
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gedit

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131576

Ah, well, that sucks. But at least I know it's not just me.

Anyways, I remember my English teacher (not my native language) mentioning years ago that you shouldn't use apostrophes in written word anyways, for example "shouldn't" instead of "should not". I have no idea if that was just her being a know-it-all who doesn't really know-at-all, which was usual from her, or indeed wrong in some degree.

I was also taught the same thing in school in the United States. I ignored the English teachers and have always used contractions in writing. I have never had a spell checker reject a contraction which was spelled correctly.

I think that the rules as taught by English teachers are about a generation behind current English usage. For example when I was in school the English teachers universally condemned the usage of the word "like" as a synonym for the word "as". The English teachers were ignored.

Back around 1900 American English teachers waged a campaign to keep "will" and "shall" as separate words. "will" was becoming used for both "will" and "shall". The English teachers were ignored.

One area where English teachers were successful about 1900 to 1930 was with the word "ain't". "ain't" is the contraction for "am not". At the time there was widespread misusage of "ain't" for all present tense of "to be". "I ain't, you ain't, he she it ain't, we ain't, you ain't, they ain't." The English teachers successfully drove "ain't" out of the English language. Unfortunately they also left us with no contraction for "am not".


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Steve Stites