Aspell, flyspell, and 'smart' quotes

(**Edit**: fixed unfortunate typo, pointed out by u/yurikhan...) I'm trying to get `flyspell` to play nice with `electric-quote-mode`. Basically, especially in `org-mode`, I want to be able to use 'smart' quotes without each instance of e.g. `isn’t` being marked as a spelling error. [Aspell only seems to like straight quotes](https://preview.redd.it/bp5jy0eow2i81.png?width=898&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9b917a72debcdd52034c319b1d157df8b350cb6) I've looked around the customization options for `flyspell` but haven't found anything that looks relevant. And it occurred to me that I cannot be the only person dealing with this problem. So I come here asking for help. Anyone? (I found [a post](http://endlessparentheses.com/ispell-and-apostrophes.html) by Artur Malabarba offering a solution to this problem but I'm wondering if others have other fixes.)

But `isn‘t` _is_ a spelling error. The correct spelling is `isn’t`. (FWIW I agree with your main point, and I’d like straight quotes to be marked as spelling errors as well.)

The easiest way is to add `shouldn` into "~/.aspell.en.pws" Another solution is to set the varialbe `flyspell-generic-check-word-predicate`.

Oops. Unfortunate error indeed…

(I never get the keyboard shortcuts for inserting non-straight quotes on a Mac right… thank goodness for `electric-quote-mode` )

But wouldn't this require manually adding each possible contraction, possessive, etc. to the dictionary? If so, it's not very practical for my purposes. (From what I can tell setting `flyspell-generic-check-word-predicate` would involve basically the same thing, but I'm not super clear on how it works from just looking at the docstring.)

I think you can do this by customizing `ispell-local-dictionaries-alist`. The variable is a list of dictionaries and their settings. See the fourth element of the entry for each dictionary.

Oh, interesting. The solution by Artur Malabarba that I mentioned in the post involves setting that variable, but somehow does more than that: ```` (setq ispell-local-dictionary-alist `((nil "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "['\x2019]" nil ("-B") nil utf-8))) ;;; Don't send ’ to the subprocess. (defun endless/replace-apostrophe (args) (cons (replace-regexp-in-string "’" "'" (car args)) (cdr args))) (advice-add #'ispell-send-string :filter-args #'endless/replace-apostrophe) ;;; Convert ' back to ’ from the subprocess. (defun endless/replace-quote (args) (if (not (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)) args (cons (replace-regexp-in-string "'" "’" (car args)) (cdr args)))) (advice-add #'ispell-parse-output :filter-args #'endless/replace-quote) ```` I started out by blindly copying and pasting from that blog post and got to what seemed like a solution, but didn't quite see what the two bits of advice were doing. Now that I read the docstring for `ispell-local-dictionary-alist` (as I should have!) and your comment, I'm trying to just set the value of `ispell-local-dictionary-alist` to all for `’` as part of words, and it looks like this works!

The predicate is a function without parameters. Inside the funciton, - current buffer is the buffer being spell checked - the word at point is the typo candidate. If the predicate returns boolean value `t`, the candidate will be highlighted as typo The complexity of predicate is many major modes pre-configures `flyspell-generic-check-word-predicate`, so maybe you can't change it directly. You might need study the major mode's own predicate instead.

For those following at home, it turns out (unsurprisingly) the two bits of advice actually do something—they allow you to correct a word using flyspell without having the non-straight apostrophe being replaced with a straight one.

Thanks, I’ll have a look!

Having this same problem - what does your init.el/`ispell-local-dictionary-alist` look like now? As far as I can tell, my `ispell-local-dictionary-alist` already has the right symbol in the right place but clearly something is still wrong.

((nil "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "['’]" nil ("-B") nil utf-8)) Why is something still wrong?

So did you get rid of the other bits of advice? I was still getting lines under correct words with apostrophes. I ended up fixing it by changing my spellchecking program to hunspell, following the instructions on [this page](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractiveSpell). Converting the hunspell dicts to utf-8 and adding the lines: `ICONV 1` `ICONV ’ '` `WORDCHARS 0123456789'’` to the .aff file fixed it. In my init.el: `(add-to-list 'ispell-local-dictionary-alist '("english-hunspell"` `"[[:alpha:]]"` `"[^[:alpha:]]"` `"[']"` `t` `("-d" "en_GB")` `nil` `utf-8))`

Weird, I just used the solution from Malabarba's post and it works great. My config: (use-feature flyspell :ensure-system-package aspell :bind ("C-c e s" . my/flyspell-save-word) :custom (ispell-program-name "aspell") (flyspell-use-meta-tab nil) :init (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode) (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook 'flyspell-prog-mode) :config ;; Tell ispell.el that ’ can be part of a word, from http://endless parentheses.com/ispell-and-apostrophes.html (setq ispell-local-dictionary-alist `((nil "[[:alpha:]]" "[^[:alpha:]]" "['\x2019]" nil ("-B") nil utf-8))) ;;; Don't send ’ to the subprocess. (defun endless/replace-apostrophe (args) (cons (replace-regexp-in-string "’" "'" (car args)) (cdr args))) (advice-add #'ispell-send-string :filter-args #'endless/replace-apostrophe) ;;; Convert ' back to ’ from the subprocess. (defun endless/replace-quote (args) (if (not (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)) args (cons (replace-regexp-in-string "'" "’" (car args)) (cdr args)))) (advice-add #'ispell-parse-output :filter-args #'endless/replace-quote) (flyspell-mode 1)) (Here, `use-feature` is just a macro I got from somewhere which basically calls `use-package` with `:straight` set to `nil`.) (defmacro use-feature (name &rest args) "Like `use-package', but with `straight-use-package-by-default' disabled. NAME and ARGS are as in `use-package'." (declare (indent defun)) `(use-package ,name :straight nil ,@args))

Thanks. Seems like you're using aspell, which I didn't try. When I started, my default ispell program was set to enchant-2 i.e. ispell, which may be a bit primitive for this.