LEXLEX is a word list of more than 20,000 legal and medical terms,and common "lawyer⌐used abbreviations" (such as states, abbreviated"Minn" instead of MN, etc.) in a form easily compiled withWordPerfect's SPELL.EXE dictionary maintenance program.
The origin of LEXLEX, several years ago, was a compilation ofsuch words by Maryland attorney Mike Stevens, several years ago. Since obtaining Mike's original listing⌐⌐which was a set of filesbroken down into A_BWORDS.TXT, C_DWORDS.TXT, etc., for usewith just about any spellchecker, I've expanded it somewhat overthe years, and have converted it into one list suitable forcompilation in what seems to me the only wordprocessor any lawoffice should be using.
Because WordPerfect has many lawyers as purchasers (and is the"official" WP of the U.S. Justice Department), they've made specialeffort to include a number of "our" terms in their larger⌐than¬average spellcheck dictionary, LEX.WP. But it's by no meanscomplete.
How to put these into your dictionary: They've been checked forcorrect spelling, but you might want to retrieve the file into WPand scan through it (it'll take up more than 300 "pages"). Youneedn't bother to delete the more obscure terms, because when wecompile this list into LEX.WP, WordPerfect's very efficient methodof coding is not going to increase the size of LEX.WP appreciably;it will still even fit on an old 360K floppy, for transfer to all thestandalones in your office, if desired.
1. Copy or move LEXLEX.SUP into your \WP subdirectory, andmake sure SPELL.EXE (which is not used by the WP.EXE programto check spelling, but only for "dictionary management") is present. SPELL will work fastest if it has the maximum RAM available, soget rid of any TSR's hanging about.
2. Run SPELL. A menu will appear. Select ADD WORDS TODICTIONARY.
3. A number of options for "adding words" will appear. WPsupports a "common word list" for super⌐speedy lookups; we don'twant LEXLEX there (lawyers' jargon notwithstanding). Neither dowe want these terms in one of the "special" dictionaries WPsupports, where you would put "transient" terms such as clientnames, geographical or technical specifics for one "big" but rathershort⌐term purpose. Choose menu item 4, ADD WORDS FROM FILETO MAIN DICTIONARY, and tell SPELL that the file is namedLEXLEX.SUP. Take a look at the clock.
4. SPELL will begin showing you what it is doing⌐⌐"writing"▄f ▄ alphabetically⌐grouped words. All very well and good, but when itcomes to the y's, you will see no disk activity light, the systemjust sits there. Surely it is hung, perhaps I should....
5. You should go have a cup of coffee, or do something else for ahalf hour. (If you have a fast system maybe it will be only 20minutes). SPELL is hashcoding this long list of words, insertingthem its dictionary, and modifying the dictionary's index (thedictionary is a special⌐purpose database, tightly integrated with WProutines). In short, your computer is doing a computation⌐intensivetask, and does not want to be bothered until done.
6. When it is done, you'll see the main SPELL menu again, 0 quitsthe SPELL program, and your dictionary has now been updated withthat long list of words. Moreover, SPELL has collated the newwords, so if by chance some of them were already in there, theyaren't duplicated. Now that they're "in the (coded) dictionary,"rather than as some of them might be, in {WP}LEX.SUP, that youcreate yourself, by telling WP to "add word" everytime itsspellchecker finds some terminology of yours that you know but itdoesn't recognize, the spellchecker will recognize many"root/ending" combinations, such as plurals.
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Making your own special terminology lists
No doubt the easiest way to do this is by "what comes naturally"when you run the spellchecker on your docs and keep telling it to"add word". The file {WP}LEX.SUP gradually builds in size. Andas it does, spellchecking slows down markedly. Every so often,pull it into WordPerfect, check its contents for misspellings, deletethe ones you really don't want in the main dictionary, compile{WP}LEX.SUP, and delete the old one (a new one will beautomatically created, the first time you ADD an unrecognized butcorrect word).
More systematically, especially if you are working on a clientmatter that has a large specialized vocabulary, so that much ofyour correspondence and other docs is always evoking"unrecognizeds", such as complex medical or technical matters;foreign country matters; a large but frequently referneced numberof personal or other "names" and the like, just type in these words,ending each with a [HRt] hard carriage return into a standard WPfile. Make sure the cursor is at the beginning of the last line(that is, a [HRt] ends the last word entered this way). You do nothave to alphabetize the words the way WP does it for you in{WP}LEX.SUP; SPELL will do that.
Use SPELL (as above) to compile this list into either the maindictionary, or use CHANGE/CREATE to create a special dictionaryjust for this "special" wordlist. In fact, I don't recommend this. That was a necessity "in the old days" when systems were floppy▄f ▄ based, and space was limited. You could keep your dictionary fromoverrunning the limited 360K disk size, and maybe even fit it onthe smae floppy as your old version of WP (or other WP's). Noone should be using floppy⌐based systems any more, and even ifyou want LEX.WP on your laptop's 3 1/2" drive, its 720K andWordPerfect's very efficient compiler will probably allow quite largewordlists to compile into LEX.WP and still fit on the same 3 1/2"floppy as WP.EXE, its printer info, and a bunch of macros, leavingdrive b: for a blank floppy to hold the text work you're doing onyour laptop. So there is really no reason for "special" dictionariesany more. There is no need to clutter LEX.WP with transientcleint names, however; {WP}LEX.SUP can handle a great many ofthose for a long time.
If you create additional specialized spellchecking wordlistssuch as medical, additional legal terms, technical, geographic, etc.,please upload them to LawCAT and share your work with otherlawyers! Don't upload a "compiled" LEX.WP, but rather just thelist, so other lawyers can check it over for their purposes.
Note: if you have a random word⌐list put together in someway other than "dumping unrecognized words with ADD to{WP}LEX.SUP, which does its own sorting you can useWordPerfect's SORT <CTRL⌐F9>,2,NAMEFILE.WP (where NAMEFILEis the filename of your WordPerfect formatted⌐and⌐saved file. Ifyou have an "ASCII" textfile that is a list of words someone elsecreated, import it <CTRL⌐F5>,2 ("CR/LF becomes HRt"), save it inWordPerfect format, then sort it (for editing) or compile itdirectly. Make sure to jump to the end of any such file and deleteany stray characters, such as extra ^Z's or a lot of @@@ (oranything) that may appear. Use <ALT⌐F3> to check for stray codesat the top of the file also. There should be no codes, eitherrandom garbage or WP⌐format commands in Line 1 Position 1,which should be the first letter of the first word. You do notneed to reset margins to 0,something (which places codes at thestart of most files, which use defaults of 10,74 or 16,112, dependingon fonts).
