Spelling & Grammar
minNotes checks your writing as you go, entirely on your machine. Nothing is sent anywhere: the dictionary and the grammar rules ship inside the app.
What gets checked
- Text blocks — paragraphs, headings, quotes, bullet, numbered and task lists — and the text cells of tables.
- Not checked: code blocks, inline
code, choice chips, links’ addresses, emails, and anything that looks like an identifier — words with digits or underscores (A001_C002,HDR10), ALLCAPS initialisms, camelCase names, timecodes (01:02:15:04). - US and UK spellings both pass. The dictionary is a merged American + British list, so color and colour, organize and organise are all fine.
Reading the underlines
| Underline | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Red dots | a possible spelling mistake |
| Blue dots | a grammar or typography issue (a doubled word, a confused pair such as their is, could of, a missing space, an odd capital) |
A word is never flagged while you are still typing it — the underline appears once the caret leaves the word and the block has been quiet for a moment.
Fixing things
Right-click an underlined word:
- Suggestions sit at the top of the menu (up to five). Click one to replace the word; it is a single undo step, and bold, links or colour on the word survive the fix.
- Add to dictionary teaches the word for good. Your words live in
spelling/user.dicinside the app’s data folder, one per line, so you can edit or share the list. - Ignore hides that word until you quit.
- Ignore rule: … (grammar issues) switches that one rule off permanently. Document ▸ Reset Ignored Rules brings them all back.
Turning it on and off
Document ▸ Check Spelling and Document ▸ Check Grammar are independent toggles and remember their state.
The grammar checker, honestly
The grammar tier is a rule set of about 1,700 pattern rules — typos that spell a different word, confused pairs, punctuation spacing, casing of well-known names, common phrase slips. It does not parse sentences, so it will not tell you a clause is malformed, and it is quiet on the fragment-heavy notes people actually write. When it does speak up it is usually right.
The dictionary comes from SCOWL and the rules from the LanguageTool project; see Licenses & Credits.