Chemistry Dictionary for Word Processors – Version 2.0 (Updated)
by azmanam on Dec 17 2008 (30831 Views)**Download the Chemistry Dictionary here.**
As anyone who’s written a paper for chemistry class or journal publication knows, spelling “errors” quickly become so numerous that you just ignore them. They’re not really errors, of course, just technical words that Microsoft’s standard dictionary doesn’t include. This is problematic for at least two reasons. One, I tend to gloss over the many, many squiggly red lines and therefore not notice actual spelling errors that have been made. Two, the standard spell checker cannot differentiate between correctly-spelled technical words and misspelled technical words. Thus, all technical words come back as misspelled whether or not they actually are misspelled.
Around this time last year (end of 2007), I was looking for a solution to this problem. I wanted to download a free “custom dictionary” to upload to my word processor to recognize all the words that were correctly spelled, but not recognized by the standard dictionary. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find one. I found several scientific spell check programs, but they are all for-pay versions. I wasn’t interested.
So I set out to create my own chemistry dictionary. I finished it up at the beginning of February (2008), and it was hosted at Sciencebase with thanks to David Bradley (read the post regarding the original release here). The dictionary was relatively small, containing some 18,000 words. But it helped a lot.
Through David, I was introduced to Antony Williams from chemspider.com. I met with him one afternoon in February, and he agreed to release his database of 1.3 million identifiers for me to integrate into the next upgrade. (Update: read Tony’s writeup here)
It took me a while, but the upgrade is complete and ready for release. Click here to download the zipped chemistry dictionary file. The 1.3 million identifiers were distilled down to around 102,000 additional words for the dictionary file (more on that in a separate post here). This upgrade bumps the dictionary from 18,000 words to ~104,000 words.
Administrivia: The dictionary is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. To figure out what that means, click here. The dictionary is compatible for Microsoft Office (Windows or Mac), and Open Office (Windows or Linux). The install file includes instructions for upgrading old versions and installing it for the first time. The dictionary should be useful for all chemists. However, I am an organic chemist. Thus, the dictionary was created from an organic chemist’s mindset. It will probably be most useful for organic chemists.
Now, I can’t guarantee that the dictionary is perfect. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or email me at chemdictionary – at – gmail – dot – com. If you notice a word not in the dictionary that you’d like to see added, you can enter below it in the form that Mitch made for me. (Thanks, Mitch) I’ll review it and consider it for the next upgrade.
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***UPDATE (1/22/09)***
1) Several people have emailed me saying they are experiencing some problems integrating the dictionary file with Microsoft Word on a Mac. Here is a useful workaround:
Open the dictionary file through Microsoft Word (open Word, then goto Open File and change the file type to All Files). With the dictionary file open, select “Save As.” One of the “File Type” options to which the file can be saved is a custom dictionary file. Save the document as a dictionary file with a novel file name. Then follow the instructions in the install file to add on this new dictionary file.
2) 2 people have independently (and most kindly) formatted the dictionary file for integration into iWork for Macs (OS X only, I believe). I don’t have a Mac, so I have no idea what that is. But if two people went out of their way to reformat the dictionary file for it and sent the file to me unsolicited, then it must be good. Here it is (zip file). This does not replace the dictionary file for Microsoft Word on a Mac. You will need to install both files if you use Microsoft Word and iWork. If you have already created a custom dictionary for iWork, you will need to append this dictionary file to the end of your current custom dictionary. Here are the install instructions:
If you don’t have a custom dictionary:
Go to: ~/Library/Spelling
copy the file “en” in this location
Log out and then log back in.
if you have a custom dictionary already:
Go to: ~/Library/Spelling
paste the content of chem-dic2:en into ~/Library/Spelling/en using an advanced text editor (i.e. TextWrangler)
Log out and then log back in.
***UPDATE 2 (2/2/09)***
1) Read the article I wrote for the inaugural issue of the ChemSpider Journal of Chemistry here.
2) Read the coverage in the Digital Briefs of C&E News (Subscription Required) here.
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Dec 17, 2008 - 09:12:35awesome! My thesis and I thank you very, very much.
Great idea! I’ll try it. I hope it doesn’t overwrite my own custom dictionary…
It wont…
A bit of Microsoft trivia: If a user has previously added words to their dictionary, the added term is not appended to the user’s default English dictionary. Rather, Word creates a “custom” dictionary on your behalf, and conveniently names it CUSTOM.dic. Search your computer (Start Menu–>Search) for ‘custom.dic’ But before you begin the search, click on ‘More Advanced Options’ to make sure ‘Search Hidden Files and Folders’ is checked. That should point you to the location of your custom dictionary file.
Adding this dictionary will just add a second custom dictionary to your list. Word should check its default dictionary, then the default custom dictionary, then the chemistry custom dictionary.
PS. In the ‘add a dictionary’ mode, you should also be able to designate the custom dictionary to which subsequently added terms are placed.
yup. that worked! i added chemistry.dic to:
C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof
then followed the directions you gave. that’s really super!
I hope random dirtbags don’t come along and flood your new_words.txt with naughties.
Thanks for taking this project on. I’m always a huge fan when someone decides to “do it right, do it yourself.”
Brad
Ha. Me too. Fortunately, the words don’t go directly into the downloadable dictionary. They sit in new_words limbo until I decide to add them to the next upgrade.
You rock! I’ve been wanting an add-on like this for YEARS!
Woot! Installed and working.
i have a screenshot here.
http://blog.everydayscientist.com/?p=1251
Cool. I’ve accumulated my own chemistry dictionary by adding the words that I’ve typed over the years, but it is nowhere near this extensive. Thanks!
OpenOffice is much better then Microsoft word.
http://www.openoffice.org
Well, maybe not much better. Better in many ways. Plus legally free! I much prefer it.
Convert it to an OpenOffice dictionary. It is really easy. I do not want to steal your thunder other wise I would do it.
Though, my normal OpenOffice dictionary is already pretty good, as it is just one click to add a word to the dictionary!
OpenOffice for the win!
The one downside I’ve found in Open Office is that there isn’t a way to put a regression equation directly on a graph as there is in excel.
Mind you, there are better graphing/regression programs than excel, I know. Just a pet peeve of mine about Open Office.
Brad
It has openoffice instructions in the file!
That was fixed in version 2.5, version 3.0 has been out for months now. Yes it was always annoying, and made it hard to recommend for GenChem students. But has been fixed for a while.
Not that it was hard to do it manually. The thing about OpenOffice I like now with the trendline equations, is it uses f(x) instead of the stupid y=, I come from old school math and hate y= and when I was using Excel would have to do it manually, regardless.
Yes, that is the old method for OpenOffice dictionaries (and will work with the new). They are now in the new version (3.0+) treated as extensions, and are really easy to make. So you can just click a web-link and it installs the dictionary. It will also get it listed on OpenOffice’s website for extensions. Which is what I meant by stealing his thunder, as he should get the credit for it by being the extension/dictionary author on the website.
Ah, I didn’t know it was fixed. I tried it about a year ago and stopped suggesting it to students based entirely on that.
Or rather, a more correct statement, when I suggested it I mentioned that it didn’t print the equations and that it wasn’t trivial (to a non-user) to find the slope and intercept. I generally showed them once and then left them to their devices, with mixed results depending on the student.
I’ll have to check out 3.0 now, of course this will be effectively null to me as I’m done teaching, hopefully for my career.
Brad
Even for dictionary files with >100K words? That was the major problem I had when I was putting together the first version of the dictionary.
Back then, custom dictionaries could only hold 2,000 words. That meant to add the chemistry dictionary as a custom dictionary would have required 9 different custom dictionaries… and that’s when it was only 18,000 words.
That arbitrary limitation has since been expanded to 30,000 words… still not big enough for this upgrade (http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=48676). I don’t know anything about the dictionary extension. Will the size of this dictionary be a problem?
Can you point me to a site so I can learn more about it and try to upload the dictionary as an extension?
I had not clue about the Dictionary size limit. I see from your bug link you even commented on it earlier this year, too!
It really seems like an odd limit though, as the English language has hundreds of thousands of words in it. Wonder how that is handled.
I’m not really sure what I need here. I downloaded the sample description.xml file and modified it. I think I did that right, but since I’m not fluent in OOo, I wasn’t sure exactly what went where. I made text files for the license text, release notes, and description.
Is that it? Do I just package all that with the dictionary file in an *.oxt file? Then what?
I am seeing this link on other blog sites now
Yay!
How do I make it one of my custom dictionaries in TeXnicCenter?
Allow me to be answering my own question. The custom dictionary is too big to use in TeXnicCenter, but you can replace US_en.dic because it’s in the OpenOffice format. In the meantime, you can still add custom words to a custom.dic file for words that aren’t in the dictionary like triazoline.
You should get mitch to rig you a digg-like thing for the new words, to help you weed the bad from the good ones. People can come and vote the good words to the top, and comment, maybe there is a misspelling or something…
Kind of a lot for something so small, but it would be so many level of badass, lol.
Thanks, but there is a thesis I need to start writing. Maybe I should go open source and let everyone help me write it.
I just hope somebody with the skills/know-how/time required will do the same for molecular biology…
http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/87/i05/html/8705sci2.html
I was having issues getting it to work on my mac at the lab, so I just opened it up, copied it, and pasted it into the existing dictionary file.
This is really cool. Thanks.
Have you figured out how to load the dictionary with Open Office 3? The directions included in the zip file don’t seem to apply. The folder to unpack in does not exist, and when I make it OO doesn’t seem to find the dictionary.
I’m working on making it an extension. I’m just not that familiar with OO.o and how to code the various parts. When it’s done, you’ll see an update here.
Please let me know when you’ve got a file and way to install your excellent dictionary in Open Office 3.0. Thanks.
as a workaround for right now, if you can find the folder where en_US is currently located, you should be able to overwrite that file with the one in the zip file.
Will update when I have more info about the extension.
I am both a chemist and an editor who uses a Mac. For most purposes I use “Word” for Mac but I also use iWork’s word-processing program. When I downloaded what is purportedly the “iWork” version appearing in the 1/209 Update #2, the download was in the form of a Unix executable file and seems not to be usable on my iMac. Am I missing something or misunderstanding how this file is to be handled?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Mac and don’t know how to manipulate files for iWork. You may try asking over here, though. They may be able to guide you better: http://macresearch.org/chemical-dictionary
I have another question about installing the dictionary on an iMac in addition to what I posted above on 2009-02-23 @13:23:26. I tried following the installation directions for Word for the Mac. and have run into a problem. The questions are this: (1) In what format is “ChemDictMac” to be saved to the Microsoft folder in the Preferences folder of the Library folder? (2) I inserted the file in a Word format and found that when I try to use it by choosing it I get a “XXX Dictionary is not available for use” message”. Why?
Word format is no good. You need to open it in Microsoft Word and resave it as a custom dictionary file. see update 1 above.
You should add the amino acids for us Biochemists!
;-P
Great Job though!
You are a god! No more red squiggles everywhere!
Thank you very much for the great resource!
I’m still confused on how to add this dictionary to OOo 3.1… Any step-by-step help or how-to-links? Please????
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