Yesterday’s posting discussed using the exclude dictionary feature of Microsoft Office to reduce patent profanity in your patent applications and Office Action responses.  Here are some other uses of the exclude dictionary feature:

• reducing embarrassing typos that “normal” spell checking doesn’t catch;
• making sure inappropriate words aren’t left in when you cut and paste from an invention disclosure form or an inventor(s)’s technical paper; and
• enforcing a preferred spelling when a word could be correctly spelled in multiple ways.

The epitome of the first scenario is typing the word “pubic” instead of “public”.  While both are English words, chances are good that you aren’t writing about anything pubic — unless of course you’re a pharmaceutical/biotech patent attorney.  Thus, you may want to add “pubic” to your exclude dictionary before you make a very public (pun intended) mistake.

Regarding the second scenario, when cutting and pasting from an invention disclosure form or an inventor’s technical paper into a patent application you’re drafting, it is often necessary to rephrase sentences and otherwise edit the content.  For example, you will often need to remove pronouns (”I” ,”We”, “our”) that are in the first person.  You may also need to remove words such as “proposed”.  Accordingly, it is useful to add these to your exclude dictionary to highlight those sentences that you need to edit or words you need to remove.  (However, please see tomorrow’s posting on the drawback of this use.)

In addition, the exclude dictionary can be used to enforce a preferred spelling when multiple spellings are possible.  The classical example for patent attorneys/agents is to mark “cancelled” as misspelled since the USPTO requires the status identifier “Canceled” (with one L) in 37 CFR § 1.121(c) — even if it will still accept “Cancelled”.  However, this is also useful for “judgment” vs. “judgement”, compound computer terms (Is it “e-mail” or “email”? “e-commerce” or “ecommerce”? “home page” or “homepage”? “Web site” or “website”?) and transliterated foreign words.

Tomorrow, I will explore some of the annoyances and drawbacks to using the exclude dictionary.

In the meantime, what other words are in your exclude dictionary? and what words or uses would you add?