Word Usage Panel of the Language Settings
Antidote handles words that belong to a particular register or words that may be inappropriate or offensive from two different perspectives. Depending on the nature of the text and your familiarity with your readers, inappropriate language may constitute a genuine error or it may be a deliberate stylistic choice. For this reason, detections concerning language are displayed both in the Language view for possible correction and in the Style (Vocabulary) view for simple verification. The following settings therefore affect both views.
- Word usage settings are set to the intermediate level by default (except for the Formal and Old-fashioned registers, which are adjusted to the minimum level). To disable all alerts resulting from these settings without configuring each one individually, uncheck the appropriate boxes (in the top left corner of each panel section).
Register
A word that appears innocuous may actually belong to a particular register (formal, old-fashioned, informal or slang). Antidote can detect linguistic register and help you avoid unintentionally using inappropriate language.
Choose from three levels of detection sensitivity for each register:
- Minimum: The corrector does not flag any words or expressions belonging to this register.
- Intermediate: The corrector flags words or expressions that belong to this register in all of their senses (e.g. belly is always informal), but does not flag them if only one sense belongs to the register in question (e.g. the noun smoke is informal only in the sense of cigarette).
- Maximum: The corrector flags all words and expressions that may belong to this register.
Offensive terms
When the box in this section checked, Antidote flags four classes of offensive terms: words that constitute a slur or are socially taboo (e.g. yid); informal words that are offensive (e.g. jackass); words that are vulgar (e.g. shit); and words that are not polite (e.g. matey).
Choose from three levels of detection sensitivity for each category of offensive terms:
- Minimum: The corrector does not flag this type of offensive term.
- Intermediate: The corrector flags terms that are offensive in all of their meanings (e.g. yid is always offensive, as it is a slur against Jewish people), but does not flag them if only one of the senses is offensive (e.g. pig is considered offensive when referring to a police officer, but not to the animal).
- Maximum: The corrector flags all expressions that may be offensive.