NOTE: this software is for Classic Mac OS (eg: OS 9) and cannot be used on Mac OS X.
Nisus Writer Classic is no longer for sale. This page is only for archival purposes.

How do I turn off AutoCorrect Spelling?

There you are, writing away when suddenly, the word that you just typed, teh, was changed auto-magically to the. Holy auto-correction, Batman! What is going on here?

That is our AutoCorrect Glossary, a very handy tool using a list created by Adam Engst of TidBITS fame.

You may like the idea of teh changing to the. You may like never having to think again about "i before e except after c", etc. so you can type away as quickly as you can with recieve and know that Nisus Writer will take care of correcting it "on the fly." You may not, however, be happy to have your lower Roman numeral 1 "i" capitalized. Or, perhaps, you live in a country were the three letters "als" actually spell a word and you don't want Nisus Writer to automatically add an "o" to the end to make it "also". What's going on here?!

That is a "feature" you can fix/disable. And, of course, as usual with Nisus Writer, there are a few possible solutions depending on how you do your work.

You can either turn off Auto-Expand in the Glossary submenu of the Gear/Cogwheel menu (uncheck Auto-Expand). This disables all auto-expansion of all glossaries that you have. It's the most extreme solution.

Or, you can remove the AutoCorrect Spelling glossary from the Glossaries folder inside the Nisus Writer Tools folder. This solution prevents any of the terms in the AutoCorrect Spelling glossary from being expanded. This is significantly less extreme.

Or, you can remove the "offending" abbreviations from the AutoCorrect Spelling glossary. This is like surgery, but, don't worry, there's no blood involved.

For example, to remove the "i" from the AutoCorrect Spelling glossary:

1. Press OPTION.
2. Choose "i" from the AutoCorrect Spelling glossary submenu of the Gear/Cogwheel menu.
3. In the dialog that appears click Yes.
4. Quit Nisus Writer so that the application asks you to save changes to this Glossary file (do so), then restart Nisus Writer.

That should solve the problem. Sorry, it was implemented for the majority of our users who are American and British English writers for whom the lowercase i (by itself) should always be capitalized as the first person singular.

Now, let's say that you like the AutoCorrect Spelling feature, but you don't need it "on" all of the time. All you need do is assign a keyboard shortcut to Auto-Expand.

To do that, just:

1. Choose Preferences from the Edit menu.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the column on the left and click Shortcuts.
3. Choose Auto-Expand from the Glossary submenu of the Gear/Cogwheel menu.
4. Type the key(s) you want to use to toggle Auto-Expand on and off.
5. Click Set.
6. Click Save Preferences.
7. Click Done.