Is there a way in Microsoft Word to have it also recognize the plural of words that have been added to its dictionary?

3

Often I'll have a word in my document that MS Word doesn't know, maybe a somewhat technical/scientific word, like 'plasmon'. I'll have it all over my document, so I'll often right click and do 'add to dictionary'.

But MS Word apparently doesn't then realize that 'plasmons' is also a word. It seems like it's fairly obvious to add a word's suspected plural (the vast majority in English are just adding an 's').

Is there some setting I can activate to make it do this?

YungHummmma

Posted 2015-06-25T20:13:34.373

Reputation: 183

Plural rules aren't as simple as just adding an "s"; there are rules for "s" vs. "es" and tons of exceptions and other pluralizations (especially for words imported into English from other languages). As far as I know, Word works from a dictionary rather than a general rule book, at least for added words. I believe you would need to add your own plurals. – fixer1234 – 2015-06-25T20:22:08.727

@fixer1234, thank you for the response. I know there are exceptions, but the vast, vast majority of words follow a set of simple rules that could certainly be easily implemented in Word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plurals Also, how likely is it that someone added a word to their dictionary, then typed the same word plus its natural pluralization, but didn't mean to?

– YungHummmma – 2015-06-25T20:29:18.150

Answers

2

Words that you add go into one or more custom dictionaries. These are a simple alphabetized list of your words. The only rule Word applies to extend the entries to other usage is that it will recognize that a capitalized first letter at the start of a sentence is the same word. So if you want plurals, you need to add them yourself. A good description of the spell checker is at http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/MasterSpellCheck.htm (which covers through Word 2013).

fixer1234

Posted 2015-06-25T20:13:34.373

Reputation: 24 254

I guess this is the answer (the answer being, no), but I'll wait a bit just to see if someone says anything different. It seems like such an obvious, easy improvement them could do. – YungHummmma – 2015-06-25T22:15:49.333

Asked: 2015-06-25T20:13:34.373

Viewed: 490 times

Active: 2015-06-25T20:59:20.027