Feb 8, 2008
Chemistry Dictionary 2.0
Some time ago, chemist Adam Azman contacted me to ask if I knew of a free or open source chemistry spellchecker custom dictionary available for word processors. Unfortunately, I didn’t. A quick search revealed only paid-for dictionaries. I thought a free tool would be very useful and so did Adam and so he set about creating his own chemistry dictionary, from scratch.
Version 1.0 was originally hosted on Chemspy and is now available on Sciencebase. Adam also did a lot of extra hard work and we worth with Tony Williams of Chemspider.com to develop a new, improved version 2.0 of the chemistry dictionary.
Free Download: Chemistry Dictionary for Word/OpenOffice – version 2.0 available here.
You can read more about how Adam’s chemistry dictionary got to where it is on Adam’s chemistry blog.
Keywords: Open Access Chemistry Dictionary, Open Source Chemistry Dictionary, Microsoft Word Chemistry Dictionary, OpenOffice Chemical Dictionary.
Original post 2008-02-08 15:03 updated 2008-12-17 16:11 updated 2009-07-27 14:01
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
many thanks!
there should be a central repository for all of the free, science and medicine related .dic files
dave
March 17th, 2008 at 9:08 am
NLP, it’s a dictionary for spellchecking against, not a definition’s lookup. What do you mean by chemical definitions, you mean synonyms for chemical names – try http://www.chemspider.com – there’s a search box in the sidebar on this site.
db
March 16th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Is your document useful for novices, or only for more advanced people? I didn’t want to download an unknown file without knowing what it’s like, or if it would be of any use to me. Maybe you could show a sample of what one would find if they used your document.
I’ve just been looking for a list of chemicals & their definitions and having a surprisingly hard time finding one. Thanks,
March 11th, 2008 at 12:30 am
David…as you know we have now contributed the list of ChemSpider identifiers to Adam to help expand his dictionary. Adam is progressing with his work…a long torturous task now to look for obvious spelling errors if they exist…
February 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I’ve created a gmail account for the dictionary. Perhaps this can be used for general questions/comments/suggestions as well as that virtual ‘drop box’ for absorbing other chemists custom dictionaries.
chemdictionary@gmail.com
February 12th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Ahh… so we’re taking sides now, are we? ;)
AA- NOT from the UK…
February 12th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Any improvements to the dictionary will ultimately be of great help – as an incomplete/incorrect dictionary is never the goal. Thank you much for offering.
I thought about that, as well as common abbreviations/molecular formulas (e.g. NaOH would be a misspelled word right now). I ultimately left them out, primarily because they are not ‘words’ but either proper names or formulas or abbreviations. What does the community think? Would including names/reactions/formulas be a useful and necessary improvement?
1st, dictionary files are not mutually exclusive. Installing this chemistry dictionary will not override any entries a user may have added-to-dictionary previously. Thus, if by assimilate you meant within one’s own personal computer, there should be no problems.
2nd, a bit of Microsoft trivia. If a user has previously added words to their dictionary, the added term is not appended to the user’s default English dictionary. Rather, Word creates a “custom” dictionary on your behalf, and conveniently names it CUSTOM.dic. Search your computer (Start Menu–>Search) for ‘custom.dic’ But before you begin the search, click on ‘More Advanced Options’ to make sure ‘Search Hidden Files and Folders’ is checked. That should point you to the location of your custom dictionary file.
As for pooling the information, here’s what I see. If we had some kind of virtual ‘drop box’ where users could submit a text file (.txt or .dic) with their own personal custom dictionary (preferably with only the chemistry relevant terms in it), those could be easily merged into this dictionary file.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I think a list of named reactions and the top 10000 chemists in the world past and present would probably make a useful addition to this project. Adam, what do you think? I know the Merck Index includes a list of named reactions. SJB also hits on the point that countless chemists will have added chemical words to their builtin dictionaries in Word, there’s probably no way to pool that kind of information easily…but I wonder whether there might be some way to assimilate it somehow
DB (from the UK too)