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Words ARE spelled wrong but they do not show as being spelled wrong in spell check, how do I delete them or correct the?

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  • Last reply by macnak81

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I have several mistyped words that never show as misspellings , but they are misspelled. How do I make spell check recognize that these worlds are spelled wrong? I tried the suggested changes to the profile folder, but that did nothing. I often mistype: would, could and show, by typing to fast and getting coudl ,woudl and shwo . Neither of these words show up as being misspelled in my spell check. I want to make sure that the auto correct catches them .

I have several mistyped words that never show as misspellings , but they are misspelled. How do I make spell check recognize that these worlds are spelled wrong? I tried the suggested changes to the profile folder, but that did nothing. I often mistype: would, could and show, by typing to fast and getting coudl ,woudl and shwo . Neither of these words show up as being misspelled in my spell check. I want to make sure that the auto correct catches them .

All Replies (7)

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Those words should be recognized by the Firefox spell checker and the en-US dictionary.

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages submenu. At least one dictionary should be installed and have a check mark to indicate that it is selected.

  • Open the "Add Dictionaries" link to install a dictionary if you do not have one.
  • Make sure that [X] "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu is check-marked.

You can enable or disable spell checking globally:

  • Tools > Options > Advanced : General: Browsing: "Check my spelling as I type"

You can look here for dictionaries:


Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window
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Type about:config<Enter> in the address bar. If a warning screen comes up, press the Be Careful button. This is where Firefox finds information it needs to run. At the top of the screen is a search bar.

Type layout.spellcheckDefault and set its value as 2 0 = checker off 1 = check multi-line only (not check single line) 2 = check multi-line and single line

Type spellchecker.dictionary and check its value. Mine is en-US

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sorry , that did not help. Those words, show, could , and would are in the US English dictionary. However, the misspelled versions still do not show up as misspelled with red underlines, or needed corrections in spell check.

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They do work for me as you can see in the screenshot.

Does the spelling checker otherwise work (i.e. are typos flagged)?

Did you make sure that the en-US dictionary is selected?

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Here is a screen shot showing misspelled words that are underlined in red, except the words shwo ( show) and woudl ( would)

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Modified by cor-el

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Yes, I did go to the persdict.dat file. That was the 1st thing I did after reading it in the forums and FAQ's. The misspelled words in question were not there.