Beginning in Mojave, spellcheck has become obnoxiously intrusive, now flagging words with apostrophes and alternate spellings in addition to its traditional spelling errors.

SPELLcheck, guys! Get it?

Is there a pref of which I'm unaware that allows me to ratchet down spellcheck's intrusions into my workflow?

Thanks.

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard and select Text. You might be able to tweak your preferences there. Also (in Finder), go to the Help menu, select macOS Help, and search for Check Spelling and Grammar on Mac. That has several suggestions.

...STOOPUD SPEL CZECQ....

Thanks for the suggestions, Jon, but no luck.

"Spelling" is apparently all-inclusive as respects the functionality I don't like.

I took a look in MacPilot (which has over 1,000 "hidden" preference settings) to see if I could find any "fine tuning" settings and all they offer is spell checking on/off, auto correction on/off, automatically substitute correct quotes on/off, and automatically substitute correct dashes on/off. In other words the same options found in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text.

The only other thing I can think of would be to turn Apple Spell Checking off and use a third party spell checker. CNET lists a couple of "free to try" options that might suit you.

Many thanks for your time and effort; they're much appreciated.

My first reaction was astonishment that you, of all people, directed me to CNET, of all places, but after seeing that the only spellchecker offered by the App Store and MacUpdate combined that's been updated since 2010 is by AplhaOmega, the biggest thieves on the Internet, I recognized a possible "why".

Unfortunately, though, CNET's offerings fall into the same developmental range, i.e. the last time one of them was updated was in 2010.

I guess I'm stuck with what Apple has given me until until either they respond positively to my feedback or a third party developer feels the same way I do.