Apple - UK spelling dictionary - teach OS X *all* -ize spellings

I found a good-enough fix for this.

I copied the Oxford English dictionary -ize words from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Spelling/Words_ending_with_%22-ise%22_or_%22-ize%22

and pasted them into

/Users/danbrowne/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary

This seems like a fairly comprehensive list. Anything which is missing I can add by hand.

One remaining issue: Apple doesn't seem to be able to intelligently conjugate these words, but using copy-paste on the list (ize -> izes, izing, ized, etc.) sorted that out.

Switching to Canadian English will sort the problem out, and seems to allow other British spelling variants, such as programme and connexion. I share your frustration: -ize is not an Americanism (although -yse is) but is standard British English (alongside the -ise variant) and preferred by Oxford on etymological grounds and by Yours Truly just because. It is also allowed in Australian dictionaries, but not in Apple's Australian English setting. Apple really ought to sort it out themselves--they're the ones who've got it wrong, after all. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it on the iPhone, however. This only allows 'English' or 'British English' (the cheek!), and the latter only permits -ise.

There is an Oxford style British dictionary available here.

You can download the bundle, extract the en_GB-oed.aif and en_GB-oed.dic files, and copy them into Spelling/Library. It will appear in the list of spelling dictionaries as "English (Library)".

Note though that this dictionary allows only -ize spelling, not -ise. You may find this annoying, or helpful in keeping a consistent style. Also, the dictionary is a bit old, and probably of slightly worse quality than the default British English dictionary.

^{I'm a new Mac user, so I ave minimal experience with this on OS X, but I've been using this dictionary for several years with Vim. Apart from a few words missing, it's very usable.}