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Spelling

φ Poiesis checks your spelling as you write and puts a wavy underline under a misspelled word. You can fix each word when you see it, or check the whole document in one pass when the draft is done. Poiesis never corrects a word for you.

Check a whole document​

  1. Open the document.
  2. Press ⌘;. You can also choose Edit → Check Spelling…, or Check spelling… in the document's ⋮ menu or in the command palette.
  3. Poiesis stops at the first misspelled word. Choose what to do with it (see the table below).
  4. Repeat for each word, until Poiesis says it's all done.
The Check spelling dialog stopped on a misspelled word, with suggestions and the Change, Ignore and Add to dictionary buttons The Check spelling dialog stopped on a misspelled word, with suggestions and the Change, Ignore and Add to dictionary buttons

Poiesis highlights the word in the text, so you can read it in its sentence. A counter shows how many words are left.

ChoiceWhat it does
ChangeReplaces this word with the suggestion, or with what you typed in Correction.
Change allReplaces every occurrence in the document.
IgnoreSkips this one.
Ignore allSkips every occurrence, for the rest of this pass.
Add to dictionaryKeeps the word, here and in every other document.

When Poiesis has no suggestion, it says No suggestions. Type the correction yourself in Correction.

The whole-document check uses Poiesis's own dictionaries: English, Spanish, Spanish (Mexico) and French. If Poiesis has no dictionary for any of the languages you check, it tells you and offers Open settings. There you can choose a language that Poiesis has.

Fix a word as you go​

  1. Right-click an underlined word. Poiesis's suggestions are at the top of the menu.
  2. Click a suggestion to replace the word. Or choose Add to Dictionary to keep the word, so Poiesis stops underlining it.

A word that is spelled right can show Synonyms in the same menu, when an installed dictionary has them. See Replace a word with a synonym.

Choose how Poiesis checks​

Open Settings → Language → Spelling. There are three settings:

  • Check spelling turns the underlining on or off.
  • Engine sets how Poiesis checks as you type.
    • Native, the default, uses your computer's own spell-checker.
    • Enhanced uses Poiesis's dictionaries. The results are the same on every computer.
  • Languages sets which languages to check. If you pick more than one, Poiesis accepts a word that is correct in any of them. This helps when a document uses two languages. With Native on a Mac, the system detects the language automatically.

A vault (the folder that holds your writing) can have its own setting. Under Settings → Language → This vault, set Default for this vault to Use global, Native or Enhanced. With Enhanced, you can also choose the languages for that vault.

Add a language Poiesis doesn't bring​

The Enhanced engine can check any language that has a Hunspell dictionary. LibreOffice and Firefox use this kind of dictionary. It is a folder that holds an .aff file and a .dic file.

  1. Under Settings → Language → This vault, set Default for this vault to Enhanced.
  2. Next to Add a language, press Add… and pick the dictionary's folder.
  3. Tick the new language in that vault's Languages.

Your personal dictionary​

When you keep a word, where it is saved depends on the engine:

  • Enhanced, and the whole-document check: Add to dictionary saves the word in Poiesis's own list. To see the list or remove a word, open Settings → Language → Personal dictionary. Poiesis underlines a removed word again.
  • Native: Add to Dictionary in the right-click menu saves the word in your computer's spell-checker. The word is not in Poiesis's list.

See also​