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FAQ:
  1. How did the dictionary end up with a non-English person?
  2. Why are you doing this?
  3. The filesize of the extension is smaller than other English dictionaries
  4. I installed your Mozilla British speller, but it still flags words you added
  5. Firefox tries to spellcheck non-English words, e.g., Chinese, when using en-GB
  6. Your British dictionary didn't recognise XYZ. How can I inform you?
  7. Hey, the words “movie”, “automobile”, “airplane”, “hardcover” and “bookstore” are missing
  8. Is it a good idea to add as many words as possible?
  9. Should proper names be added? Why are some possessives flagged?
  10. Use of vulgar slang and offensive words
  11. -ize vs -ise
  12. The more words the speller has, the slower it becomes?
  13. Will the speller ever get a thesaurus?
  14. When I mistype the first-person singular as lower case “i”, no error is shown

ISSUES:
  1. The handling of possessives
  2. Thunderbird crashes with your add-on


FAQ:

1) How did the dictionary end up with a non-English person?⠀
Because the old maintainers vanished long-ago, and no one offered itself for the task. No special skills are needed for it except having a good knowledge of English and check which words appear as typos and look for them in credible sources.


2) Why are you doing this?⠀
I like to help the community, and I have been involved in several projects in the past. I have created the ultimate British speller, which is better than most commercial ones. Every person deserves to have the best for free.


3) The filesize of the extension is smaller than other English dictionaries⠀
This happens because I am using commercial packing software (WinZip) to create the extensions. It is also possible that other developers didn't compress their dictionaries.


4) I installed your Mozilla British speller, but it still flags words you added⠀
This may be a conflict with other installed British spellers, which must be removed.
Furthermore, you need to install the speller both on Thunderbird and Firefox. It WON'T be on both automatically!

If words such as “realise” appear as typos in your Firefox, it may happen because Firefox defaulted to the US dictionary.

Just right-click in an editable text area and select the British dictionary:


Software requirements (WebExtension):
Firefox:
 — 60.5+ ESR (29-JAN-2019)
 — 62+
Thunderbird:
 — 60.5+ ESR (29-JAN-2019)
 — 65+

Software requirements (Legacy Extension):
I provide a .xpi for Firefox/Thunderbird 59 and below.
 It is also intended for Firefox 61 and Thunderbird 61–64.
In the legacy add-on, remember to disable automatic updates so that it doesn't install future WebExtensions.
Download it from:
https://github.com/marcoagpinto/aoo-mozilla-en-dict/tree/master/Extension - Firefox + Thunderbird + SeaMonkey (GB) (Legacy).




5) Firefox tries to spellcheck non-English words, e.g., Chinese, when using en-GB⠀
When you enable a dictionary, it will compare all words being written with the ones in its wordlist. The spellchecker doesn't know the real language being used by humans. In this case, disable spellchecking while writing in Chinese (right-click in an editable text area and uncheck “Check Spelling”) or enable the Chinese dictionary if available.


6) Your British dictionary didn't recognise XYZ. How can I inform you?⠀
After you are sure the word is in credible sources such as the Oxford Dictionaries or Collins, first search for it in the project's GitHub. If it is not found there, open a ticket on GitHub or e-mail me directly: marcoagpinto@sapo.pt.
For AU/US/CA contact Kevin Atkinson: https://github.com/en-wl/wordlist.
ZA was maintained by Dwayne Bailey, it is currently maintained by me (2021+) but it is a low-priority task.

Notice that for a word to be recognised, it must be added by me.
For example:
A → job
B → jobs
C → job's

I must add A, B and C for the speller to recognise them.


7) Hey, the words “movie”, “automobile”, “airplane”, “hardcover” and “bookstore” are missing⠀
Yes, because they are American words according to Oxford, the greatest authority in British English:
 — movie American → film British
 — automobile American → car British
 — airplane American → aeroplane British
 — hardcover American → hardback British
 — bookstore American → bookshop British

Notice: Due to complaints, “movie” was added on V2.57 since it is a widely used word.


8) Is it a good idea to add as many words as possible?⠀
Yes, it is a good idea. I am trying to add words with the maximum number of characters possible to avoid showing too many suggestions. Use the grammar checker LanguageTool to make sure that the words aren't incorrectly used:
 — OpenOffice: https://extensions.openoffice.org/en/project/languagetool;
 — LibreOffice: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/languagetool;
 — Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/languagetool;
 — Thunderbird: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/grammar-and-spell-checker;
 — Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/languagetool/oldceeleldhonbafppcapldpdifcinji.

Adding as many words as possible is useful because it is better to have valid words, even if they are sometimes confused with others, rather than risking typos and uncertainty about correct spelling. Is it better to see most words marked in red?


9) Should proper names be added? Why are some possessives flagged?⠀
Proper names are a special case. I add them in uppercase to appear as typos if lowercase is used. That is how we differentiate them from normal words. The reason sometimes typing a possessive is flagged is that all forms must be included in the speller. Example:
 1) Marco;
 2) Marco's.

If 2) is not in the speller, it will be flagged. All names can have possessives, so it is an ongoing task to add them all.


10) Use of vulgar slang and offensive words⠀
Vulgar slang doesn't appear in the suggestions because I used the NOSUGGEST flag of Hunspell. This means that if someone types the word correctly, it won't appear as a typo. If it is typed incorrectly, it will be shown as a typo without suggestions. The words are valid though because they appear in official dictionaries.

This was a requirement from the LibreOffice administrators, who only accepted the speller if I censored the words. LibreOffice is used by millions of people, and I am the English dictionaries' maintainer.


11) -ize vs -ise⠀
Although most British people prefer to use -ise, -ize is not incorrect in some words according to the Oxford Dictionaries and others. So, when both are possible, we have both in the speller:
 — optimize/optimise;
 — realize/realise.

(LanguageTool Editor)

Oxford Dictionaries will only refer that certain words accept both ize/ise for Premium accounts.
The regular user won't know by accessing the Oxford site, but I have access to it.

In 2025+ there will be two folders on GitHub with the specific -ize and -ise files for manual use in software that supports them, which will be updated twice a year.


12) The more words the speller has, the slower it becomes?⠀
In theory, yes, but in practice it is different. The British speller has ~270K words. The pt_PT has ~1M words. The Portuguese speller is much larger, and no one complains that it is slow.


13) Will the speller ever get a thesaurus?⠀
The AOO/LO extension has a huge American thesaurus for all languages in it. I got in contact with the people who built the American and British thesauri for AOO/LO a long time ago. The American one guy said he didn't have an opportunity to update it, and the British one guy said he would e-mail me, but never did (the reason there is only one thesaurus in the AOO/LO extension). In Mozilla, you can use the LanguageTool add-on to access synonyms.


14) When I mistype the first-person singular as lower case “i”, no error is shown⠀
 The reason “i” doesn't appear as a typo is because it is a Roman number. Since the speller is also used for word processing (LibreOffice/OpenOffice), I have added at least all Roman numbers up to xx or xxi. Try the grammar checker add-on mentioned on #8.




ISSUES:

1) The handling of possessives⠀
On 1.Feb.2023 Andy wrote a review on Thunderbird's add-on website referring to the incorrect use of possessives in the dictionary, so I e-mailed some people to find out the best way of handling the issue.

I am going through all the dictionary words, checking which ones are nouns or proper names and adding possessives to them.

V3.1.8+ (1.Mar.2023) of the dictionary follows this philosophy:
Because nowadays, many English texts use “the boys's cars” instead of “the boys' cars”, I wrongly added possessives to plural words.

Words such as “OBE's” (Out of Body Experiences) where “'s” can be a possessive or an “is” are tricky: “An OBE's a good experience.”

LanguageTool's explanation on how possessives work: https://languagetool.org/insights/post/possessive-apostrophe

The adding of “'s”:
- It will be added to singular nouns/proper names, even if they end in “s”:
  1) analysis + analysis's, but not to the plural of it: analyses
- People + places' names, even if they end in “s”:
  1) Moses + Moses's, but not plural names such as: Simpsons
- Plural words not ending with “s”:
  1) men + men's
- Where “'s” means “is” (see the “OBE” example above)

Possessives won't be added to:
  1) Taxonomic words in Latin: Bryozoa;
  2) Time eras: Paleozoic.

(LanguageTool Editor)


2) Thunderbird crashes with your add-on⠀
This may be antivirus related.

I use McAfee and one of the Thunderbird 115 updates was terribly slow and crashing all the time.

After nagging everyone possible, I found out that the culprit was McAfee, so I reported it in their forum and they fixed it.

To make sure it is an antivirus issue, close Thunderbird, disable the antivirus temporarily, open Thunderbird and try to do what you were doing to check if it now works well.

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Last update: 17.Sep.2024