English US or UK

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jennydiski
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English US or UK

Post by jennydiski »

Why is it when I've got language preference set to English (British) that whenever I call up spell check it reverts to English (US), and even when I change it for a word, it goes back to US for the next? Aside from the cultural hegemony, it's a pain if you're writing for UK publications. Am I doing something wrong?
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Hamid
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British English

Post by Hamid »

In NWP Preferences=>Languages, select ‘English (British)' from the list of languages, and in the ’Spelling’ pop-up menu select ‘British English’. This should fix the problem. I suspect your current setting in Spelling is 'English', which, believe it or not, means 'American English'.
jennydiski
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Joined: 2008-01-13 08:08:07

British English

Post by jennydiski »

All that I did, and just did again to be sure, but still the spell thing reverts to English US. And it's astonishing how much difference there is. Will I just have to make the US dictionary learn English? A bit of a bore.
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Elbrecht
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Post by Elbrecht »

Hi -

try a new test file after making sure you are still on the British side. Changes don't work in retrospect - i.e. without SELECT ALL and changing manually, I guess?

HE
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jennydiski
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Post by jennydiski »

No, I've tried selecting all, resetting options, new files, everything. I still get a reversion to US English.
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Elbrecht
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Post by Elbrecht »

Hi -

it does stick with me -
reopening is still fine...

HE

"British" & "U.S." in Apple "Keyboard Menu"
"English (British)" & "English (U.S.)" in Nisus RTF File "Language Attribute"
MacBook Pro i5
SSD 840/850 Pro
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xiamenese
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Location: London or Exeter, UK

Post by xiamenese »

jennydiski wrote:No, I've tried selecting all, resetting options, new files, everything. I still get a reversion to US English.
Jenni,

1: Have you edited your Nisus New File and made sure that that is set for British English? If not, any new file will open up as American English.

2: Any file that you open in NWP that has been created in another app which doesn't set a language, such as an export from Scrivener, will come up in the default, which is American English. If it's a Word doc from someone else, it may have an overall language mark, but won't have individual stretches marked as you can do in NWP. I import a lot of files written on Chinese Word and they always come up set as Chinese.

3: To deal quickly with any files that open as American English or Chinese -- even though in English -- I have set a key-stroke Opt-Cmd-B, so I can select all and use that keystroke to set it quickly in British English. I also have Opt-Cmd-H to turn a stretch into Simplified Chinese at a stroke if I need to.

Hope that helps
Mark
jennydiski
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Post by jennydiski »

Ah, thank you. Yes, I'm importing from Scrivener. I see.

Jenny
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mrennie
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Post by mrennie »

Alternatively, selecting your text in Scrivener, copying it and then using Edit>Paste>Paste Text Only in Nisus Writer Pro should solve your problem, too.
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xiamenese
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Post by xiamenese »

mrennie wrote:Alternatively, selecting your text in Scrivener, copying it and then using Edit>Paste>Paste Text Only in Nisus Writer Pro should solve your problem, too.
It would, except that Scrivener works primarily on the basis of text being held in a "binder" split up into small manageable chunks which can be moved around and re-ordered within the binder, and then pulled together temporarily into a single stream for editing together if necessary or compiled for exporting as a single RTF, DOC or text file.

Obviously, I don't know how Jenni works or what she's working on, but I use Scrivener for editing translations, one of which, for instance is split into 17 sections. I could copy and paste the text in those sections individually into a NWP file, or I can compile it for export as a single file and open that in NWP ... much more efficient. But when I do that, I need to convert it from American to British English.

:)

Mark
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martin
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Post by martin »

It looks like the original poster has had her problem solved, but all the same I wanted to add one thing to aid people in understanding this phenomenon.

In NWP (and internally inside RTF files as well) language is a character attribute. So just as the font differs across different bits of text in your document, so can the language. If the "English (US)" language is applied to some text, NWP will by default automatically switch the spellchecker to American English for this text. A lot of other programs specify US English as the text language, and this is why it can seemingly magically reappear in documents as you edit.
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xiamenese
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Post by xiamenese »

martin wrote:In NWP (and internally inside RTF files as well) language is a character attribute. So just as the font differs across different bits of text in your document, so can the language. If the "English (US)" language is applied to some text, NWP will by default automatically switch the spellchecker to American English for this text. A lot of other programs specify US English as the text language, and this is why it can seemingly magically reappear in documents as you edit.
Thanks for that Martin, but to return to Jenny's problem, there is an oddity. I use Scrivener set to UK English, so that spell-check, etc. is UK rather than US, so it would seem that while in Scrivener the attribute is set. On the other hand, when I open it in NWP it opens as US English, which suggests therefore that the language attribute is not being exported in the RTF. I'll take it up with Keith at Literature & Latte when I have a minute. Exam time at the moment. :(

Mark
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martin
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Post by martin »

That's possible Mark- I believe Scrivener uses a modified version of Apple's RTF, which by default neither reads nor writes language attributes. I'm sure Keith will be happy to take a look when you're finished with your busy period. Maybe there's something he can do to work around the deficiency.
jennydiski
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Post by jennydiski »

I've just sorted this out, I think. It turns out that you have to specify British English in the Languages option of System Preference of the Mac on the menu bar, which is - natch - set to US English by default. Then with Scriv and Nwp new file set to UK English the right dictionary comes up. Penny/cent finally dropped.
Tony
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Post by Tony »

I have a similar problem with British and US English preferences. It seems like any file that has to leave Nisus (to Word say) and then come back irreparably loses it British English preference on the Languages tab of Nisus preferences and in consequence the QuickFix then defaults back to US settings. There seems no way to get it permanently back. This despite the fact that it was created with a New File set correctly, language-wise, and also Mac system languages. Try as you like upon return it will not maintain its British English settings after closure. That's my experience anyway.
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