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FAQ:
  1. How did the dictionaries end up with a non-English person?
  2. Why are you doing this?
  3. The filesize of the extension is smaller than the ones from 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 in British
  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


FAQ:

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 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 in 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 have Mark Tyndall's British speller, it must be removed. Search for it in Extensions/Dictionaries. Also, you need to install both on Thunderbird and Firefox. It WON'T be on both automatically!

Some people complained that words such as “realise” appear as typos in the latest Firefox, which happens because it defaults 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 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 on GitHub or e-mail me directly: marcoagpinto@sapo.pt.
For AU/US/CA contact Kevin Atkinson: https://github.com/en-wl/wordlist.
ZA by Dwayne Bailey is unmaintained.

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.
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://lexico.com/en/definition/movie;
 — automobile American → car British → https://lexico.com/en/definition/automobile;
 — airplane American → aeroplane British → https://lexico.com/en/definition/airplane;
 — hardcover American → hardback British → https://lexico.com/en/definition/hardcover;
 — bookstore American → bookshop British → https://lexico.com/en/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-and-spell-checker;
 — Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/languagetool/oldceeleldhonbafppcapldpdifcinji.


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 sometimes typing a possessive is flagged is that 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 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: https://lexico.com/en/definition/optimize;
 — realize/realise: https://lexico.com/en/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 ~260K 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. 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 there is only one thesaurus in the AOO/LO extension). In Mozilla, you can use the LanguageTool add-on to access synonyms, but notice that its British dictionary is only updated every three months.


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. You could try the grammar checker add-ons 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 sent an e-mail to some people to try to find out the best way of dealing with the issue.

Regarding the possessives, they have to be added manually.

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

V3.1.8+ (1.Mar.2023) of the dictionary will follow this philosophy:
The “M” flag is used in the dictionary to add “'s” to words.

Since I have noticed that nowadays many English texts use expressions such as the “the boys's cars” instead of “the boys' cars”, so I was adding possessives to plural words, which is wrong.

I will start fixing it for the next versions. It will take me a few months since there is so much that needs to be done!

Some words are tricky, such as “OBE's” (Out of Body Experiences): “An OBE's a good experience”, so it could be using “'s” as a possessive or as an “is”.

However, there is now new information thanks to Andy, and from now on, this is how possessives will work:
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) man + man's, 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;



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Last update: 19.May.2023