Instant Spell Check: On Everything You Type
March 31, 2008
I am nearly ‘OCD’ about poor spelling, yet I still manage to forget to run the spellcheck on my own emails and even on my documents. I just haven’t developed the habit. Partly because so few programs actually provide spellcheck.
How is it that so many programs still don’t even have spellcheck in the twenty-first century? There’s Wikis, IM/chats, comments/forms, blogs and websites … well, you get the idea.
A couple of years ago I came across the free version of WordWeb for Windows™ and it has completely transformed my writing. I use it so regularly that I don’t even notice it anymore.
It’s a dictionary that interactively spell checks everything you type, not just emails or documents but form inputs, wiki entries and all of the other places I mentioned above. It is even spell-checking this blog entry as I type!
WordWeb is completely non-invasive. Like the live spellcheck found in word-processors it simply adds a thin, red dotted line under any words it doesn’t know and by right-clicking over the word you can select a replacement from a short suggestion list. It also allows you to add the word to your dictionary.
A great side affect is that I have just one dictionary for everything I write, not a new dictionary to train for each new program. For me that in itself would make the program worth having, but as I began to use it I found it could do so much more!
WordWeb places an icon in the system tray that opens a dictionary/thesaurus window that automatically looks up any highlighted text. You can enter other words or click on the various synonym/antonym lists to find alternatives. At any time you can substitute the current word for the (previously highlighted) word with just a button click.
WordWeb also has tabs to automatically look up the current word (or phrase) in wikipedia or other online sources. A button on the toolbar even sends the current webpage to your default browser (which is great because WordWeb doesn’t have tabbed browsing - it’s not a browser after all).
I have easily developed the habit of looking up words I don’t really know and using the wikipedia tab for fast access to information about anything I can highlight while I am reading. My vocabulary, confidence and writing have all prospered.
WordWeb operates perfectly well in places it shouldn’t be expected to, and I would be absolutely lost without it.
