“Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.” - Paul Hawken

Eco-Terminology That Stumps MSWord

Posted: August 31st, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Media Coverage, Nomenclature, top |

I write and report on the ongoing rapid evolution of our transportation infrastructure, energy systems, agriculture, buildings, and so on — and I do most of my work with MSWord 2004 for Mac. Though I loathe spellcheckers, by habit I run the feature on my work before passing it along.

After hitting “ignore” one too many times, I’ve started keeping a list of words that crop up in my work, but which consistently stump Word’s spell checker. Here’s a sampling. Curious if newer versions of the software flag these terms. Can someone out there check for me?

brownfield
renewables
compostable
megatonnes
greenspace
greenfield
sustainably
raingarden
stormwater
rainbarrel
gigawatt

5 Comments on “Eco-Terminology That Stumps MSWord”

  1. 1 Jason said at 5:31 pm on August 31st, 2009:

    MS Word 2007 on a PC likes compostable and sustainably. Doesn’t like brownfield et al.

  2. 2 ceeinbc said at 2:45 pm on September 1st, 2009:

    For what it’s worth, Apple’s Pages 4.0.2 (part of iWork ‘09) is okay with brownfield, renewables, greenfield, sustainably & gigawatt. It offers hyphenated or two word versions of all the rest, with the exception of megatonnes which it wants to spell in Imperial (read American?) measurement terms instead of Metric — i.e. one “n” and no “e”.

    I’m surprised your spell checker doesn’t have a “learn spelling” or “ignore spelling” option for those commonly used words in your writing that the sytem always questions — or is that just a Mac thing?

  3. 3 ceeinbc said at 2:55 pm on September 1st, 2009:

    Sorry, my bad with regard to the “ignore” option — I should have read your post more carefully — a “learn” option, however, would surely mean it would no longer highlight such words once you’ve used it each of your particular words?

    Cheers,
    Cee

  4. 4 James Glave said at 2:57 pm on September 1st, 2009:

    Yes, there is an “add” button, and I’ll start using it. For some reason I’ve got stuck in the habit of hitting ignore. I think it’s more interesting that the language is evolving so quickly, In a strange way, I sort of like keeping Word dictionary in default.

  5. 5 Frank said at 7:06 am on September 27th, 2009:

    I’ve been working in city and regional planning for nearly 15 years, and stormwater, greenspace, and brownfield have always stumped Word. Greenspace is still evolving from two words to one, but I’m guessing that these words just aren’t yet in the mainstream to be considered words by, well, Word.

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