Hi all,
I had a couple of issues with pages on my macbook air 2013 running the latest version of mac OS Catalina.
The first thing is I was spell checking my document today. The document is a fantasy novel so there are different names for people and places etc. Even though I had told spelll check to learn some of these in the most recent spell check, it kept going back to them, It even did it when I pressed ignore instead.
There also seems to be gramatical errors it's picking up on and they are incorrect for instance suggesting of is incorrect when off is suggested. I read the line and have determined the use of the word of is correct based on the sentence. I tell it to ignore these but it keeps coming back to them, so much so that I began to go in circles constantly getting to the end of the document and being put back many pages up from the current end and I'd checked it multiple times and hit ignore.
Anyone know what is going on here please?
The second issue is sometimes words wrap over to the next line if they appear at the end of a line of text. This happenes when using voice over speech or a braille display. When I arrow through with speech enabled letter by letter or word by word, the word appears to be intact with no space or line break.
As you can understand when reading back it's frustrating to have the end of words appear to wrap to the next line. for example:
"The man ran downstairs to see what had hap
pend to the chickens."
If someone is able to help me out with these issues it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Comments
Word Wrapping
The words are wrapping because you have hyphenation turned on.
If you don't want the word wraps read back, try using the voiceover reading commands rather than moving the insertion point with just the arrows.
Or, you can turn off hyphenation.
How do I turn off hyphenation and what is it?
Hi, sorry for late reply. What is hyphenation and how do I turn it off please? I didn't even turn this on as far as I knew. It's always done it. not with every line but with a lot. Thanks in advance, your help and previous reply is greatly appreciated.
Hyphenation
Hyphenation hyphenates a wrapped word. Voiceover however does not see the hyphen.
You are probably better off leaving it on as it will look nicer. You can circumvent vo reading the words as wrapped by using a vo reading command such as read by sentence with control-option-command-page down.
To turn it off for the entire document: Go to the toolbar and select the document radio button. Then in the document formatter, uncheck the hyphenation check box.
can I turn it off globally?
Interesting. Just curious, how does it look better having the hyphenation on? wouldn't it visually insert a hyphen? doesn't that look bad if the word is broken up like that? and why wrap the words, why not just put the word on the next line if there isn't enough space for it on the previous line?
Is there a way to turn that setting off too so it just puts new words on a new line if they won't fit on the previous line?
Hyphenation
When you turn hyphenation off, the word will not be broken. The entire word will just be placed on the next line.
global setting
Great! I prefer using the arrow keys to read so this will be a big help. Those instructions, I know you said they were for the document but is it a global setting willl it apply to all other documents, both existing and new? Or is there another place I go to turn it off for all documents?
Document
The formatter would only apply to the current document.
I think you would need to create your own document template with it turned off.
Document template
Interesting. I didn't know that was possible. Not sure if I would do that, but just in case, how do you create a new template?
Document Template
It is quite easy. Save as template from file menu.
Here is an Apple support article that will tell you more than I am: https://support.apple.com/guide/pages/create-a-custom-template-tan526e83fd0/mac.
I'm sure there are some all ready there with hyphenation turned off. The blank document for example seems to be.
Thank you
Thanks for this, much appreciated. I will give it a read and do some more research. It might only be my novel that is playing up but I will try creating a blank document with the existing template and see what happens and study it more closely.
Please give me the instructions again
Hello, I tried following your instructions to turn off hyphenation for the document, I can’t find the tool bar or the document formater. I went into the formatted group but didn’t exactly find what you mentioned. Would you mind giving the instructions again just to make sure I haven’t missed anything please?
Spell check, reading
The spell check issues are system-wide. I see the same behavior with of versus off and its versus it apostrophe s when I use the Scrivener app.
As for the unique names in your content, I've seen spell check treat singular and possessive as different words, and you need to click Learn on both of them.
My main beef with Pages is that VO+A should read the entire document but it always seems to stop at the top of each new page. I have to VO+A again to continue reading. I read a lot of imported MS Word files, so perhaps the problem is specific to my use case.
Also, VO+F, the VoiceOver find command, is unable to look past the current screen content in Pages. This isn't a problem in Scrivener, VO+F finds any text in the open document. I wish Pages worked the same way.
May I have step by step instructions please?
I tried your initial instructions. I went to pages preferences and in the tool bar there was only general, rulers, and autocorrection. I also tried the other toolbar in the main pages window, but can't find what you are talking about. May I please have step by step instructions please? as I feel I'm missing something here. Thanks in advance, your help is greatly appreciated. When I say step by step, I mean exactly what keys to press to get to the toolbar and the different options.
sighted help fixed the issue, but would still like clarification
My sighted sister assisted me. I was able to then get to the toolbar in the main pages window, not preferences, The document tab was selected but I couldn't find those options. My sister was able to turn off hyphonations so the issue is finally resolved, but confused because I should be able to fix it myself or find those options but can't. Am I missing something?
step by step instructions to turn off hyphenation
If anyone still follows this, I by some miracle have finally figured out how to turn off the hyphenation and giving clearer instructions below for anyone's reference.
1. Navigate to and open your document.
2. Once the document is opened, you will most likely have focus placed on the document layout area.
3. press VO left arrow 4 times or until you hear toolbar.
4. Press Vo, Shift, down arrow to interact with the toolbar.
5. Press VO right arrow 12 times or until you hear document radio button.
6. Press VO space to select this radio button, then press VO, shift, up arrow to stop interacting with the toolbar.
7. Press VO right arrow 6 times or until you hear voiceover say Formatter group
8. Press VO, shift, down arrow to interact with the formatter group.
9. Press VO right arrow 3 times or until you hear voiceover say document formatter, scroll area.
10. Interact with this by pressing VO, shift, down arrow.
11. Press VO, function, right arrow to jump to the far right of the options.
12. Press vo left arrow once to get to the hyphenation checkbox.
13. Press VO space to uncheck it.
14. You should now uninteract with the formatter and navigate back to the document layout area and body and be able to read the document with no more hyphenation putting words on the next line. Hope this helps.