Just for comparison, here is what Word does in English (this is Word 2010, but 
I 
think this was the same at least as far back as Word 95).


(1) Words with an Initial Capital are considered as normal, except that proper 
nouns are allowed. For instance Cat and Jim are correct, whereas Jmi and jim 
are 
wrong. Even the grammar checker does not complain about Cat in the middle of a 
sentence.

(2) Words in ALL CAPS are by default ignored completely. If the option is 
turned 
off then proper nouns are allowed i.e. JIM and CAT are correct. Either way, as 
with Initial Capital there is no complaint about using all caps, even from the 
grammar checker.

(3) Words separated by *hyphens* are spell-checked as separate words. The 
problem that triggered this discussion (socio-technique, and similar ones like 
pseudo-differential, ex-wife etc) is avoided because all common prefixes 
(including these ones) are considered correct, even when not before a hyphen.

(4) Words separated by *full stops* (AKA periods) and similar are spell-checked 
as whole words. For instance cat.Jim is marked wrong. Obviously trailing full 
stops are allowed, but sometimes they are necessary. For instance "eg", "eg." 
and "e.g" are wrong, whereas "e.g." is correct.

Other types of punctuation work either like (3) or (4) e.g. parentheses are (3) 
but commas, colons and quote marks are (4).

Not mentioned so far in the discussion, but possibly also of interest:

(5) If a word is repeated repeated, then the second one is marked incorrect. 
This feature existed before Word 95, which is when the grammar checker was 
introduced, so its inclusion in the spell checker could just be historical.

(6) By default, numbers within words cause them not to be spell checked, but 
this can be turned off. Similarly for web links and file names.

Here are all the foreign language options that are available:

(7) Enforce accented uppercase in French (off by default)

(8) French modes can be "traditional and new spellings", "traditional" or "new" 
(the first one is the default).

(9) Spanish modes can be "Tuteo verb forms only", "Tuteo and Voseo forms", or 
"Voseo verb forms only" (first is default).

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