Word2003 endless loop in spell-check

[ChrisGreaves]

I can't recall ever seeing an endless loop in Spell-check in 20 years of using Word2003.
Those of us with newer versions may want to (just for fun) see if this is yet-another-bug that has not been fixed. Although using my original document might be a necessary condition.

I was composing a reply to John Gray in mu customary manner, but using MSWord as my text editor, with its ability to save my document every minute.
I select the chunk of text that is my reply and start Spell-Check with the <F7> function key.

Untitled1.png

First up Word2003 complains about my mis-use of a formal technical term, so I choose to Change All occurrences of "diopter" with "Diopter" with a capital letter.

Untitled2.png

But now I fall foul of a plural rendition.
Word2003, presumably, cannot apply its plurals rule to a word added to Custom.Dic, or at least, not to a word added to Custom.Dic in the current session.

In the text edit box I carefully delete the lower-case "d" and type the upper-case "D".
Word2003 objects that the word "Diopters" is not found in the Custom.Dic. (FWIW I believe this to be true!) So I choose "yes" to use this spelling and continue checking.
At this point my word "Diopters" starts blinking and flashing like billio, and even plugging in my portable keyboard and using Ctrl+Break won't interrupt it.

I load task manager and kill the process.

I reload Word2003 repeat the spell-check with the same result. Not a flaky piece of RAM, I suspect.

Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Using English (UK) as language:
Word in Microsoft 365 wants to change diopter to Dioptre and diopters to Dioptres.
I haven't tried adding Diopter to the custom dictionary.

Using English (US) as language:
Word in Microsoft 365 has no problem with Diopter and Diopters, but it suggests changing metre to meter.

[Charles Kenyon]

Rather than obsess on this, mark the word to not be checked for spelling or grammar. You can use a character style to do this.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mso ... 55e8d636cc

[ChrisGreaves]

Word in Microsoft 365 has no problem with Diopter and Diopters, ...

Thanks Hans. This suggests that the bug might be fixed.
However, I've had little problem with plurals in the past. In my example I was tackling a plural after adding a singular spelling to Custom.dic and before exiting (and re-entering) the document.
At a guess I'd say I've added at least three plurals a year to Custom.dic.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

You can use a character style to do this.

Thanks Charles, but this is hindsight.
When we add a word to Custom.dic we expect to be able to manage plurals of the new term.

I can play with character styles only after I have solved the problem of Word2003 whirling into an endless loop!
Cheers, Chris

[Jay Freedman]

Chris, you may expect Word's spell checker to handle plurals automatically for words in a custom dictionary, but it has never done that. The rules-based inclusion of plurals, gerunds, and other forms operates only on the main dictionary, which also includes "hints" for words with irregular forms. Custom.dic and other custom dictionaries rely on manual addition of each form that you want to accept.

As far as "diopter" is concerned, that word was added to the main dictionary in Office 2010, and both the singular and plural forms are accepted by the spell checker in all versions since then.

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris, you may expect Word's spell checker to handle plurals automatically for words in a custom dictionary, but it has never done that.

Thanks Jay.
I didn't know that.

I suppose that in the past I have seen plurals dealt with in a satisfactory manner {because they were plurals based on the main dictionary content} but not realised that plurals of a Custom.dic entry were not handled.

One part of me wants to be an ordinary user and so I see "The Dictionary" and wonder why in some cases plurals can't be handled.
The other part of me sees "The Basic Dictionary" and "Custom.dic" and can think (for just one example) that plurals-making might be code based on the internal structure of "The Dictionary" and not suitable for the plain-text Custom.dic.

That said, all of me wonders why Word2003 should go into an endless loop when trying to pluralize a word in Custom.dic.
FWIW I pasted that last sentence into a New document, spell-checked, added "custom.dic" to the Custom.dic ^{1} and then typed/appended "Custom.dics" to my document and spell-checked anew. Not a problem.
So maybe there was some subtle corruption of my previous document.

^{1} You can guess what I want to say about this!
Thanks again, Chris