47 votes
Accepted

Vim cannot find medical spell files

The "medical" spell file does not exist, it is just an example of a name that is longer than two characters. You would have to generate one yourself.
30 votes

Remove word from dictionary

To remove a word, try zuw and/or zug I've tried cmd + fing the spell man page for "remove word" but found nothing. For a cmd+f search, I have had more success searching only on "remove" :-) If ...
  • 1,058
25 votes

Vim cannot find medical spell files

In response to Bram's answer, I have found, modified, and compiled a medical spell file that can be used with Vim. I've made the full instructions and the source code available under a GPL3 license ...
  • 587
24 votes
Accepted

How to enable spell check for certain file types?

The best way to set an option for a particular filetype is to use autocommands. Here you could add something like that in your .vimrc: autocmd FileType markdown setlocal spell This line will ...
  • 48k
23 votes
Accepted

How can I undo `zg`?

From the help zuw *zug* *zuw* zug Undo |zw| and |zg|, remove the word from the entry in 'spellfile'. Count used as with |zg|. zuW ...
  • 23.3k
20 votes
Accepted

Ignore URLs and email addresses in spell file

You can add custom syntax rules, and give them the @nospell keyword, this will tell Vim not to apply spell checking to this syntax match. For example: :syn match UrlNoSpell "\w\+:\/\/[^[:space:]]\+" ...
19 votes
Accepted

How to share Vim spellchecking additions between multiple machines?

Vim uses the spl file to do the checks, and the spl file is generated from the add file. We can speculate on whether the spl file is portable across different machines and Vim versions, but it's ...
  • 3,949
15 votes
Accepted

How can I have Vim sound the terminal bell when I misspell a word?

The last misspelled word is not directly accessible, nor can the highlighting be queried. You have to retrieve the word before the cursor yourself, and spell-check that one separately. Fortunately, ...
  • 17.3k
15 votes
Accepted

How can I make vim download spell files?

The help states this: The plugin has a default place where to look for spell files, on the Vim ftp server. If you want to use another location or another protocol, set the g:spellfile_URL variable ...
12 votes
Accepted

Spell mistakes have weird coloring

The SpellBad highlighting group should allow you to configure the appearance of misspelled words. Let's say you want them to be red on yellow background. Then you could add the following code ...
  • 6,586
12 votes
Accepted

How can I use multiple spell files at the same time?

Vim finds the file you're referring to as the "master" file by searching for files with a particular naming scheme in the spell subdirectory within the paths specified by your runtimepath. (See :help ...
  • 30.1k
11 votes

How to configure spell to ignore some environments in LaTeX

You can disable spell checking for syntax items by adding them to a cluster together with @NoSpell. You can read :help spell-syntax for some information and look at your tex syntax file which most ...
  • 3,329
11 votes

Autocorrect spelling mistakes

I would recommend against automatically fixing every word that is marked wrong, for two reasons. First, you'll get a lot of false positives on things you meant to type, especially in more technical ...
  • 2,617
11 votes
Accepted

Correct all spelling mistakes in the document

Here's something I didn't know until a little while ago: Macros can be recursive! That is, you can call a macro from within the same macro. So, here's the command: ggqq]s1z=@qq@q That is, gg Move ...
  • 14.4k
11 votes
Accepted

Change color of misspelled words in vim-lexical

The repository says it uses Vim's spellcheck, so you should be able edit your color file's SpellBad highlighting to do this. Something like: hi SpellBad ctermfg=red guifg=red You could also put ...
  • 7,626
11 votes
Accepted

What is the difference between red and cyan in spell check highlighting?

If your highlighting is like mine then that would be a SpellLocal error. SpellLocal Word that is recognized by the spellchecker as one that is used in another region. And... A word may be ...
  • 19k
10 votes
Accepted

vim shortcut for ignore spell-checked word

Use zG. From :help zG *zG* zG Like "zg" but add the word to the internal word list |internal-wordlist|. and from :help internal-wordlist ...
  • 17.1k
10 votes

How to set a colorscheme that still shows spelling errors?

Here is a bit more complete answer to address this annoyance: " Force to use underline for spell check results augroup SpellUnderline autocmd! autocmd ColorScheme * \ highlight SpellBad \ ...
10 votes
Accepted

How can I make Vim not use the entire screen for spelling suggestions?

There is the 'spellsuggest' option for this, which controls various options for the spelling suggestion. You can add a limit by appending a number (note the +=): set spellsuggest+=10 Which limits ...
9 votes

Spell-check blacklisting word sequences

Alright, so I looked it up this way since I had Vim's source code lying around: $ cd ~/Documents/vim $ ack 'the the' ... runtime/doc/spell.txt 399:It can also be used to recognize "the the" and ...
  • 2,221
8 votes
Accepted

Converting .spl spell files

Yes, you can use :spelldump. :spelld[ump] Open a new window and fill it with all currently valid words. Compound words are not included. ...
8 votes
Accepted

How can I use Vim's spellcheck with ‘smart quotes’?

$ grep "'" /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l 26226 $ grep -i python /usr/share/dict/words Python Python's python python's pythons The problem is that all these words with apostrophes are actually in your ...
  • 2,617
7 votes
Accepted

Warning when opening commit message with Neovim

If I run :set spell, I get: spellfile#LoadFile(): There is no writable spell directory Shall I create /Users/adamharris/.nvim/spell (Y)es, [N]o: Select y Cannot find spell file for "en" in utf-8 ...
  • 1,777
7 votes

Autocorrect spelling mistakes

By chance, I have written a plugin that does exactly this. It is called Vim You, Autocorrect! After installing, type :EnableAutocorrect to switch it on in any buffer, and you will soon see that ...
  • 30.1k
7 votes

Is it possible to turn on spell-checking for only parts of buffers?

You can define syntax rule with the @NoSpell keyword. From :help :syn-spell :sy[ntax] spell [toplevel | notoplevel | default] This defines where spell checking is to be done for text that is ...
7 votes

Disable spell checking for URLs in BibTeX

For the URLs, I have the pattern \w\+:\/\/[^[:space:]]\+, but I cannot figure out what to put in containedin. The best I came up with is containedin=bibQuote,bibBrace, that works but it breaks syntax ...
  • 27.3k
7 votes
Accepted

Why does "thge" correct to "Chge" using spellcheck?

chge is an abbreviation of "change." If you do not like this word, just type zw to mark it as "wrong." vim's spell word lists are obtained from free sources and are sometimes not ...
  • 13.5k
6 votes

How to configure spell to ignore some environments in LaTeX

You can add your own syntax rules to e.g. ~/.vim/after/syntax/tex.vim. In order to prevent spell checking inside a command such as \url, you can use the following code: syntax match texStatement '\\...
6 votes

How to share Vim spellchecking additions between multiple machines?

I've created a Vim plugin for this. It finds the path to the spell folders automatically and then calls mkspell on any word lists it finds at startup to regenerate the spell files. It also creates ....
6 votes
Accepted

How do I allow sentences to begin with lowercase letters?

There's the 'spellcapcheck' option; from the help: Pattern to locate the end of a sentence. The following word will be checked to start with a capital letter. If not then it is highlighted with ...

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