FAQ
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1) How did the dictionaries 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. One just needs to have 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 have been involved on several projects in the past. I have created the ultimate British speller, which is better than most commercial ones. Every person deserves the right to have the best for free.


3) The filesize of the extension is smaller than the ones from 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 spellers. If you had Mark Tyndall's British speller before mine, it must be removed. Search for it in Extensions/Dictionaries. Also, you need to install both on TB and FF. It WON'T be on both automatically!

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


5) Firefox tries to spellcheck non-English words, e.g. Chinese, when using en-GB
When you activate 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 activate 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 in GitHub or e-mail me directly: marcoagpinto@sapo.pt.
For AU/US/CA contact Kevin Atkinson: https://github.com/en-wl/wordlist.
For ZA contact Dwayne Bailey: http://translate.org.za.

Notice that for a word to be recognised, it must be added by me.
For example:
A
B
C
I must add: A, B and C.
The speller won't suggest missing words by magic.


7) Hey, the words "movie", "automobile", "airplane", "hardcover" and "bookstore" are missing in British
Yes, because they are American words according to Oxford, the greatest authority in British English:
 — movie American → film British → https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/movie;
 — automobile American → car British → https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/automobile;
 — airplane American → aeroplane British → https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/airplane;
 — hardcover American → hardback British → https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hardcover;
 — bookstore American → bookshop British → https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bookstore.
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:
 — AOO/LO: https://languagetool.org;
 — Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/languagetool;
 — Thunderbird: https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/grammar-checker;
 — Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/languagetool/oldceeleldhonbafppcapldpdifcinji;
 — Google Docs: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/languagetool/kjcoklfhicmkbfifghaecedbohbmofkm.


9) Should proper names be added? Why are some possessives flagged?
Proper names are a special case. I add them in uppercase, so they will appear as typos if lowercase is used. That is how we differentiate them from normal words. The reason why sometimes typing a possessive is flagged is because all forms must be included in the speller. For 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 ! 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.


11) -ize vs -ise
Although most British persons 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: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/optimize;
 — realize/realise: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/realize.
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.


12) The more words the speller has the slower it becomes?
In theory, yes, but in practice it is different. The British speller has ~210K 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 persons who built the American and British thesauri for AOO/LO. The American one guy said he didn't have time to update it and the British one guy said he would e-mail me but never did (the reason why there is only one thesaurus in the AOO/LO extension). Also, Mozilla doesn't accept thesauri.

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Last update: 1.Feb.2019