Have your Mac Learn Spelling

Is your Mac trying to autocorrect a word that it thinks is spelled wrong, when it isn’t? Did you know you could have the Mac learn that spelling? You can also have the Mac unlearn a spelling! I show you how in this video on how to have the Mac learn spelling forwards it thinks are typed incorrectly.

Video TranscriptAnd this video, we’re going to look at how we can have the Mac learn spelling from specific words that it is mistyping. Maybe you have a word that the Mac is trying to correct, and you don’t want it to correct it. How can you add it to the max dictionary? So then it no longer auto corrects it. That’s what we’re going to look at in this video.

Let’s go to my Mac. Now, the way that I recommend doing this is by using. Text at it. This is located in every max applications. Folder comes with every Mac. It’s a basic word processing. It’s not anything like Microsoft word, but you can do basic typing with it. So what I’m going to do, I’m in my finder here and I’m going to go to my applications folder.

I’ll be in that, I’m in my finder here. What I can do is I can go up under a go and then we go over. Applications when I select this, the window opens up and it opens up over to my applications in my applications folder. I’m going to put this in list view in my applications folder or in every applications folder.

What you’re going to have is an app called tech status. Again, this is a basic word processing or basic text editor. So now I just double click on this to open. I’m going to close the window in the back. Now, what I’m going to do is open up a new document. Basically, we’re going to use text, edit to train the Mac or teach the Mac any words that we want it to add to the dictionary.

So now I just click on new document here. Let’s move this in the center and let’s make this tech size a little bit larger here. And now what I’m going to do is type in here. This word. And the word that I wanted to learn is Dan’s Tutorials as one word as an Dan’s Tutorials dot com. But when I type in Dan’s Tutorials, watch what happens.

I do this as one word.

What it did is it put a space in. So it corrected it. That’s not what I wanted to do. I want it to be just one word. So how do I do that? How do I tell the Mac that this is one word? Well, first thing we need to do is we need to re-type it, but when I retire it, what I need to do is make sure that I do not put a space at the end of the word.

So I type in here Dan’s Tutorials as one word. Now you’ll notice I did not put a space here. The cursor is right next to the ass. So. I have this one word. If I put a space in there, what it might do is put a space in between Dan’s and tutorials. Like I showed you at the beginning there again, I don’t want it to do that.

I wanted to learn this word right here. So now what I do is I select this. I just double click on it. We can see that it is selected. And then I hold down the control key. When I hold down the control key and I click on it. What I have here is learn. So now all I need to do is just select this and adjust, learned that spelling.

So now watch what happens. I’m going to erase this and we’re going to type in here. Dan’s Tutorials again with a space and we can see it did not correct. It. It learned that spelling. Now let’s say you want it to unlearn the spelling. Maybe I no longer want it to remember that. Well, all I have to do.

Selected again. So I have it here selected. I just double click on it. And then when you hold down the control key, you’re going to see unlearned spelling. So now I select this and it just unlearned that. So now when I type it in here again, watch what happens. It just put a space in there. Again, it did not learn that.

Now, this also works. If it doesn’t correct the spelling and it puts a red line on there, you might see that instead of having the Mac, auto-correct what it might do is just indicate that it is misspelled. So then you’re going to see a red line. It doesn’t actually correct it, but it shows a red line. You can also double-click on that word that has the red line underneath it, the red dots.

And then have it learned that spelling when you do. The Mac will no longer show that red dotted line under there because it learned its spelling. So if you have a word that the Mac is trying to auto-correct or indicate that it is misspelled, all you have to do is just double click on it to select it, hold down the control key, and then have it learned the spelling.

You can pretty much do this in any. That accepts texts such as pages or text at it, but I recommend just using tech status, just go into text, edit type in your word. And then when you go into your other apps, what it’ll do is it’ll remember that spelling, that dictionary is shared across all of your other apps.

So that’s how you can have your Mac learn spelling for words that it thinks are mistyped by adding them to the dictionary.