🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <874@6sceng.UUCP>
blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews) writes:
 
>In article <1992Apr3.154246.21468@ee.rochester.edu> wengler@ee.rochester.edu (Mikey) writes:
>|I'm getting no error on the word 'dependant'
>
>According to three different (real, paper) dictionaries I have handy here,
>"dependant" is an acceptable alternative to "dependent" (which I assume
>is what you want).
>
>I won't claim there aren't cases where the Word dictionaries are wrong,
>but this isn't one of them.
 
Now that the original poster has been suitably humiliated, I'd like to take
his side a little further.  While either "dependent" or "dependant" may be
acceptable according to a sufficiently comprehensive dictionary, it's poor
style to use both in the same document.  I know, I said "style", not
"spelling", but it would surely be a desirable feature of a spelling checker
to note use of a secondary spelling, and ask me which alternative I wish to
use for the rest of the document.
 
Likewise, it would be useful if the user dictionary could suppress entries
in the main dictionary which are prohibited by local styles.  For example,
a friend doing her dissertation lately faced a departmental rule that all
French words should appear with correct accents.  Word dictionary contains
many common French terms (e.g. "siecle") without accents, and there's no
way we can overrule Word and say we prefer not to tolerate "dependant" or
unaccented "siecle".