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A Spell-Checker for Scientific Terms?

Posted by Cliff on from the properly-spelling-'decyltriclorosilane' dept.

deaflamb wonders: "I'm a biology major and have been writing a paper for a class. I'm using Microsoft Word on my mac. It's annoying me how often I have to click 'ignore' or 'add' on the spell checker when it comes across words only used in Science. Was wondering if there where any free scientific spell checkers out there that can be added into Word or OpenOffice (since I use that too), and how well they work?" It didn't take me long to find these guys, who look like they cover a significant portion of the terms used in the medical and science world, however, their price for a single user license for only one of their specialty packs can run into the hundreds of dollars. Might there be other options that are a bit more affordable or, as the deaflamb asks, free?

6 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Try this: by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 4, Informative
    This page has a few dictionaries up for free. I don't know if they've got quite what you're looking for, but it's worth a shot.

    Beyond that...the textbook is always a good choice. Type it, check it a few times, and then add it to the dictionary. :)

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    Goo goo g'joob.
  2. Same boat... by xiao_haozi · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am finishing up a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and have battled this throughout my collegiate years as well. I have searched long and far for a solution and have thus far not found anything. I have come across a few medical versions but even they tend to be for the lay person. One solution (somewhat) has been http://wikipedia.com/. I know this is not a dictionary but works if you need to double check a spelling, but mainly I have found it useful while writing scientific pieces to double check a few pathways or cell types. While its not comprehensive by any means, it is coming along at a suprisingly great rate. On a quick note... The Cell (which can be found at NCBI website) is a good book reference for such purposes as is Voet and Voet's Biochemistry.

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    my site of misleading and incorrect information!
  3. Abiword Plugins, including Wikipedia by Noksagt · · Score: 2, Informative
    One solution (somewhat) has been http://wikipedia.com/. I know this is not a dictionary but works if you need to double check a spelling, but mainly I have found it useful while writing scientific pieces to double check a few pathways or cell types.
    AbiWord is a capabale F/OSS word processor which is available for most platrforms. It is lighter than OO.o Writer (though that also means it lacks SOME of OO.o's features). One of the really nice features is that it supports a number of plugins. There are plugins which allow you to search a selected word on Wikipedia, google, and dict.org. Also, on *nix, it can use GDict.
  4. Google Scholar by phyy-nx · · Score: 2, Informative

    I know this isn't an autmated solution, but whenever I need to know how to spell a scientific word, I use Google Scholar. I take a guess at the spelling, search for it, and google will often prompt me with the correct spelling. If I get thousands of hits but all happen to be wrong then hey, at least I'm spelling the word the same way thousands of others have :)

  5. Medical Dictionary by sgent · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've used medical dictionaries in the past. Stedmens is probably the most well known -- and make their dictionaries available in digital form for import into Word, etc. They also have legal and some other terms. http://www.stedmans.com/category.cfm/210

  6. Plants' Latin names by skinfaxi · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've been working on a web project about vegetable seed identification and did some searching for a very similar thing (a dictionary I could import into MS Word that had the Latin names of plants). I didn't find anything appropriate - it's particularly sticky because some folks use different names to mean the same plant, and some use the same name to refer to different plants! As in many scientific fields, there are efforts to standardize the nomenclature so everyone is talking about the same thing using the same terms.

    This page has an interesting list (of plant names) http://www.bgbm.org/IAPT/Nomenclature/Code/SaintLo uis/0118IndexScfNames.htm but isn't great for building a dictionary because it includes way -not- to spell words!

    Standardized Nomenclature of Medicine, Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) is a medical group struggling with the same issues. They don't seem to provide any kind of dictionaries, either. http://www.snomed.org/about/index.html