ispellpersonaldictionary

ispell personal dictionary is a user-maintained list of words that ispell, the traditional interactive spell checker, should treat as correctly spelled. It complements the standard dictionary by allowing the user to store proper nouns, technical terms, acronyms, and other words that are not commonly found in general word lists. Entries persist across sessions for the same language.

Location and format: The personal dictionary is stored in a dedicated file, usually named personal. Its exact location depends on the installation and language; it may be placed in the user's home directory or in the ispell data directory and is often language-specific (for example en_US). Each line represents a single word, typically with optional flags in some variants to indicate capitalization or affixes.

Usage: During an interactive session, the user can add a word to the personal dictionary when prompted, or later edit the file directly to include new entries. Once added, the word is accepted by ispell in future checks, even if it would otherwise be flagged as unknown.

Notes and scope: The behavior and format of the personal dictionary can vary between ispell versions and platforms. While the core idea—user-specific words that override the base dictionary—remains consistent, some deployments use different file names or locales. Other spell checkers such as Aspell or Hunspell implement similar personal dictionaries with their own file conventions.