in-line spellcheck quirk

[Scott]

re: Word 04 (also X, and perhaps earlier versions).

I've found that Word periodically puts the wavy red lines under words
that are perfectly fine and are in the dictionary. Word itself "knows"
the word is correct:
1) when a contextual menu is used for the word (to get alternate
spellings), the wavy line instantly disappears the moment the contextual
menu pops up, and no alternate spellings are displayed. No wavy lines
appear thereafter for that word.
2) if a letter is replaced with the same letter, the wavy lines go away.
I.e., if it shows "them" to be misspelled, if I replace the "e" with an
"e" then it's fine.

This quirk only occurs occasionally, though regularly. I have noticed
that it seems to happen only when punctuation immediately follows the
word: a period or a comma certainly, and perhaps other punctuation marks.

Has this been observed before? I didn't find it in the FAQ or Google
Groups archives.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I've found that as well, together with the punctuation link, and have just
assumed that the screen refresh hasn't caught up to what's there. I think I
used to occasionally notice this in Word 2001, but am definitely noticing it
more in Word 2004. That's why I assumed it was a screen refresh issue, b/c
I know they made changes to how that works. Next time I will have to check
if scrolling the word off the screen and back on works to eliminate the
line.

DM

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Scott:

This can indicate that your system is a little light on available memory.
When Word is struggling for memory, it pages your custom dictionary out to
disk. There's then a bit of a pause before it brings it back it.

Clicking on the word in error forces the process.

We're finding that a gig of memory is a nice round number for taking on
serious documents in Word 04.

Cheers

re: Word 04 (also X, and perhaps earlier versions).

I've found that Word periodically puts the wavy red lines under words
that are perfectly fine and are in the dictionary. Word itself "knows"
the word is correct:
1) when a contextual menu is used for the word (to get alternate
spellings), the wavy line instantly disappears the moment the contextual
menu pops up, and no alternate spellings are displayed. No wavy lines
appear thereafter for that word.
2) if a letter is replaced with the same letter, the wavy lines go away.
I.e., if it shows "them" to be misspelled, if I replace the "e" with an
"e" then it's fine.

This quirk only occurs occasionally, though regularly. I have noticed
that it seems to happen only when punctuation immediately follows the
word: a period or a comma certainly, and perhaps other punctuation marks.

Has this been observed before? I didn't find it in the FAQ or Google
Groups archives.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi John,

I only have just 512MB of RAM right now (cause I'm testing what difference
the gig will make, plus I'm lazy) but I see this behavior in not-serious
documents of under 20 pages, and probably under 5pp.

DM

 

[Scott]

This can indicate that your system is a little light on available memory.
When Word is struggling for memory, it pages your custom dictionary out to
disk. There's then a bit of a pause before it brings it back it.

Clicking on the word in error forces the process.

We're finding that a gig of memory is a nice round number for taking on
serious documents in Word 04.

I have 1.5 GB of RAM on a Dual 2GHz G5. And if it's a word like "them"
why is the custom dictionary involved?

 

[Scott]

I only have just 512MB of RAM right now (cause I'm testing what difference
the gig will make, plus I'm lazy) but I see this behavior in not-serious
documents of under 20 pages, and probably under 5pp.

Yep, here too--certainly in documents under 5 pages long.

 

[John McGhie]

Hmmm... There are a few causes for the problem. Low memory is the
"fixable" one, unfortunately.

The spelling checker is a separate threat (like a different program). It
runs in the background at a low priority and is often a bit behind the
times.

I am sorry: you have plenty of power and plenty of memory, so I do not have
an answer for you.

Regards

I have 1.5 GB of RAM on a Dual 2GHz G5. And if it's a word like "them"
why is the custom dictionary involved?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410