Is there a need for specialty spell checking in InDesign?

[Anne-Marie Concepcion]

Dylan, <slap, slap> stop discouraging InDesign plug-in developers! ;-)

Okay I know you meant well and wanted to provide an objective reply.

But ... I beg to differ. I do a lot of InDesign training at journal publishers and a fair amount for marketing/publishing departments of universities, hospitals and pharma companies. They would *very much* like to have specialized spelling/hyphenation dictionaries for their field!

A couple weeks ago I was at a large pharmaceutical company in Michigan, teaching ID to their communications department. They *loved* the English: USA Medical dictionary that comes with ID; it catches misspellings that the default English: USA doesn't. Yes they receive Word files etc. from the actual scientists/researchers, but they are not known for their spelling prowess nor are the word processing programs they're using to write the papers known for their strength in specialized dictionaries.

Regardless, in the end, it's the publisher of the piece who needs to proof and check spelling. The final edited piece may go back to the author for approval but I've never seen an author dispute a corrected spelling error.

Production people, layout artists, ad agency people, textbook publishers etc. who are ultimately responsible for this work are normally not in the field and need the authority of a reputable, comprehensive specialty dictionary to make the spell check calls.

So I'd say, yes, there's a definite need!

AM

[Claudio_González@adobeforums.com]

Anne-Marie, I fully agree with your opinions, except for a minor item:

I've never seen an author dispute a corrected spelling error.




Obviously, you have not worked for the most important bank in this country. It is true that they don't dispute corrected spelling errors; the just simply ignore them. And they don't precisely thank them. :-)