When I write i’ll, LibreOffice Writer 6.4 automatically capitalizes the i. I have unchecked the boxes in AutoCorrect for capitalizing the first letter of a sentence, but it does this no matter where i’ll occurs. I want Writer to render two hyphens as a dash, so I don’t want to turn off corrections as I type, but I also don’t want it deciding to capitalize letters that I chose not to capitalize. How do I turn this off?
Replacement tables are in Tools>AutoCorrect>AutoCorrect Options, Replace tab. The English (USA) configuration contains i => I which means that an “i” word will be replaced in any context by its uppercase equivalent. For AutoCorrect, a “word” is an alphabetical sequence surrounded by spaces or punctuations. Consequently, the “i” in “i’ll” accounts for a word as there is a space on its left and an apostrophe on its right.
Use the Delete button to suppress the rule.
Note: I don’t know what you use “i’ll” for. I was taught that the pronoun “I” was always written uppercase, so the replacement rule is grammatically correct. If your “i’ll” is not an abbreviation for “I will”, you’re absolutely right in requiring no interference by Writer. There exists an alternate solution which keeps the rule for handling grammar misspellings. You can create a character style which language is set to None and you style your exceptions with this character style. The style language is used to select the replacement table. Since the language is set to None, no table matches and your text is left unaltered. Yes, this is tedious because you must mark every exception but if you’re accustomed to styles it is but another markup of the text.
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But i’ll isn’t included in the replace list. I checked for that before asking the question.
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I’ve spent two decades teaching English composition and literature. I’m aware of the language’s rules. I don’t want Writer to correct anything related to grammer. I only want autocorrect to format em-dashes. When I set language to none, the spellchecker then doesn’t work when I run it manually–and no, I don’t want my spelling checked as I type.
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i’ll is not included in the list because in this sequence “i” is a word by itself, followed by quote, followed by word “ll”. Consequently the rule for word “i” applies. This is why I suggested to remove rule for “i”.
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The idea with a language “None” character style is not to mark the whole text but only the exceptions so that they are ignored both by the replacement rule and the spelling checker. Replacement and spellcheck still works on unmarked sequences.
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“i” is also not in the replacement list. There is nothing to indicate that Writer will mess with it.
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My point is that I shouldn’t have to worry with it. I should have to tell Writer what to do, not what not to do.
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If “i” is not in the replacement list, I can’t explain the behaviour. Are you in multilingual context (several language packs installed)? In which case, you must select the language in the dialogue to see the relevant replacement list.
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I agree. Writer, LO in general, has been configured to be immediately usable (the so-called “intuitive” behaviour) for the majority of users (and this has been chosen by the developers according to what they think of common user needs). This was done to avoid a tedious lengthy configuration. However, every user has a different workflow. I personally start by customising my copy to fit my habits, notably deactivating all those automatic transformations of my typing.