James Wamser, from Sells Printing in Wisconsin, sent us a great tip recently. A client was frustrated because someone had accidentally typed the word “emplyee” in an InDesign document and InDesign’s spelling-check feature didn’t flag it as incorrect. After all, that can’t be a real word, right?
Well, not in English. However, James (who is quite good at this kind of sleuthing) pulled the document apart until he found the answer: Somehow all the text in the document had been set to the Ukrainian language.
While I don’t speak Ukrainian (though one or more of my grandparents may have), I do know something curious about how this language acts in InDesign. Specifically: Every word you can type appears to spell-check properly. That’s an amazing feat for a language — even über-flexible Esperanto can’t pull that off.
The problem, you see, is that Adobe either forgot to include a Ukrainian dictionary in CS3 or they couldn’t find one to stick in the box. A quick glance at the Dictionary pane of the Preferences dialog box uncovers the error:
Notice how Spelling is set to [No Vendor]? No vendor, no spelling. So “emplyee” looks jes’ fine to me!
None of the other languages are so lucky. I’m at a loss as to how to turn this problem into an opportunity (besides an April Fools’ joke on a colleague). But it is worth noting as Potential Quicksand #47: What to check when spell checking stops checking!
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on January 15, 2008
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