
Recently launched by Greedy Intelligence ®C a company dedicated to NLP and applied linguistics technologies, it is the automated all-in-one proofreading solution for Windows users, offering spell/grammar/punctuation checking, vocabulary enrichment, dictionary, translation and much more. It might not be for you.1Checker is designed to solve all these problems. Is Ispell any better or faster than Aspell or any other command line spelling checker? I have to say it's no worse than any of them, nor is it any slower. Those are the options I find most useful when working with Ispell, but check out Ispell's man page for descriptions of all its options. ispell_default in the root of your /home directory.

What happens if Ispell runs into a word that's spelled correctly but isn't in its dictionary, like a proper name? You can add that word to a personal word list by pressing I. If you don't want the backup file that Ispell creates after checking a file, add -x to the command line-for example, ispell -x myFile.txt. For example, if you enter ispell -t myReport.tex, Ispell ignores all markup. When starting Ispell, add -t for a TeX or LaTeX file, -H for an HTML file, or -n for a groff or troff file. Let's take a quick peek at some of the ones I regularly use.Ī few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that Ispell works with certain markup languages. The program has a number of options, some of which you might use and others you might never use. This example illustrates basic Ispell usage.

10 command-line tools for data analysis in Linux.Ispell has dictionaries for over 50 languages. You're not limited to my mother (and only) tongue. My only language is English, so I just need to worry about grabbing the US and British English dictionaries. If it isn't installed, fire up your distribution's package manager and install Ispell from there.ĭon't forget to install dictionaries for the languages you work in, too. Ispell is still a peppy application that you can use effectively in the 21st century.īefore doing anything else, check whether or not Ispell is installed on your computer by cracking open a terminal window and typing which ispell. Ispell's been around, in various forms, since 1971. You might also want to check out the venerable Ispell. I do most of my writing in plain text and often use a command line spelling checker called Aspell to do the deed. Regardless of your spelling chops, it's always a good idea to run what you've written through a spelling checker. That's especially true if you're quickly banging on your keyboard to meet a deadline. That said, there are people who never quite pick that skill up-I know a couple or three outstanding writers who can't spell to save their lives.Įven if you spell well, the occasional typo creeps in.

A skill that takes time to learn and to master.
