Check Your Speling
It’s time to take a break for a little story. Today’s story is about how WordPress.com learned to spell.
Several months ago, when we started up this blogging site for y’all, it was an invite-only affair. This little scheme allowed us to manage the growth rate and build up a bit of hype around the ‘net. It also let us seed the ranks of WordPress.com bloggers with the people we knew would be strong pillars, for we knew that upon the backs of these giants would be built the towering WordPress.com community.
Sounds kooky, doesn’t it? Well, it worked. Here you are, the blogging elite. 😉
One of my first invitees (we’ll call him Clymer to protect his identity) was a distant friend who liked to write everything in a word processor before pasting it into WordPress. Many of you already know what a terrible experience that is. Clymer was not deterred.
When I would ask my friend Clymer why he insisted on using his brand-name word processor despite the horrendous HTML it produced, he always blamed his actions on the lack of a spellchecker in WordPress. Given the choice between a blog visually wrecked by bad HTML and a pretty blog marred with misspelled words, Clymer opted for the ugly blog with good spelling.
Does Clymer’s story sound familiar? I’ve been reading and responding to feedback. I know the score. Just like Clymer, many of you wanted to do all of your editing in WordPress but you couldn’t because you required a spellchecker. Friends, your spellchecker is here and I’m going to show you how to use it.
The Button
There is a new spellchecker button in the WYSIWYG editor toolbar that can be activated by clicking on it or pressing the Alt-N key combination. (It’s Ctrl-N on a Mac.) After a short delay, any words not known by our dictionary server will be underlined in red.
The Mistakes
At this point, the spellchecker is waiting for you to click on any of these words. When you do, it retrieves a list of suggestions and presents them to you.
The Suggestions
Click the one that you want to replace the misspelled word. When you’re done with the spellchecker, you should turn it off so the red-underlined words are returned to normal.
The spellchecker does have some limitations. You cannot add your own words to the dictionary at this time and we do not have such a feature planned. (We will be updating the global dictionary, however, because it’s just not right that it doesn’t know the words “WordPress” and “blog.”) There are also some older browser versions that are not fully supported by this new feature, specifically Firefox 1.0.7 and lower. Also, as evidenced by the title of this post, you can’t spellcheck the title field.
Along with this glamorous new feature, we have provided an updated version of the WYSIWYG editor that fixes several bugs and changes the way some things are encoded. Anyone who has struggled with writing code directly into a post will appreciate that the editor is now truly WYSIWYG. <em>See?</em> If you want italics, use the Italics button (or its hotkey). The HTML editor is still available, of course.
Finally, we would like to mention that this feature is on the roadmap for version 2.1 of WordPress, the open-source package upon which WordPress.com is based. Don’t thank us, though. Thank Clymer. He’s been nagging me for a spellchecker since the day I emailed his invitation.
- March 26, 2006
- New Features, WordPress
This one is really a must add-on and I am very glad to see this now on WP.com … simply great.
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Nice to see the must-have-function for blogging on WP.com.
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Excellent add-on… double thumbs-up!
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Thanks for this! but what about other languages? Will we have spellcheckers in Spanish for example?
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Great – however will users that prefer the non-WYSIWYG editor benefit from this new function?
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The addon of the spell checker is brilliant guys thankyou !
I tend to type words backwards at times for some reason and it takes me ages to re – read my posts looking for my errors so thanks a ton from me, and a big a THANKYOU to Clymer!
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It seems to use pspell/Aspell, which support quite a few languages.
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wow. thats awesome!
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this is just perfect. thanks wordpress.com guys!
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I wanted this for a long time. Thanks!
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You’ve saved me from myself. Thanks WP.
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I am a typo king and I needed this very badly thanks Andy
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Yes! Thank you.
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Well, I’ll assume that the spell checker is abstracted enough from the language variable, so that it will only be a matter of creating dictionaries in order to have support for other languages — which can (and certainly will) derive from the community.
If it isn’t, nice work. If it is, great work. 😉
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Oh my God, yES! Thank you so much!
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Good Feature. But isn’t “Spelling” (in “Check Your SpeLing”) supposed to be spelt with two L’s & not One!!!
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Wow. I guess I should have looked at this before I tried to find another answer. (Now if you can fix the line break problem in the WYSIWYG editor, I’ll be a happy camper 🙂 )
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This is a great feature to have. I am sure that the blogging community here at wp.com will have an typo free blogs from now on!!!
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Clymer rocks.
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Yay! Very very useful! 🙂
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I’ve been using this for quite sometime now. I think it comes with Firefox browser or Google, not sure. It simply works with WP.COM while you write an entry. You can also use other languages. Neato.
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You my friend, have answered my prayer!
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Thank you so much!
Hope you would support common shortforms also…
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Thank you for the spell checker you guys! Now I don’t have to re-read my entry twice before posting it.
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I am glad to see this, but I have used the html editor since I started going blind, I don’t see the option to turn on/off the WYSISYG editor any longer.
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Good news for the spelling challenged, like me.
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:O :O :O
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Awesome. Day by day WordPress.com is getting better and better!
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GREAT:) simply great i was waiting for this one for so long, next Flickr Support please 😉
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ThnakThank you Clymer, whoever you are. I think I’ve mentioned that you guys rock, so I’m not going to this time. Really.
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YOU GUYS CAN’T TELL ME YOU DON’T HAVE SPELL CHECK IN THE NO-FRILLS EDITOR. (HTML Editor) wth!!
Look, this is simply amazing, and you guys really give us the best but it’s a shame that the HTML Editor does not have it, a lot of us use this editor and we would really like this, please WordPress.
Or, Am I the only one who doesn’t see this???
I remember suggesting something similar for WordPress sometime ago, Matt said no LOL!. http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=488&replies=10
😀 Rock on!
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A button to increase/decrease the font size would be a very useful feature in the editor. I am keenly looking forward to it.
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Hip, Hip Yahooo!!
What do call a person who’s floating uber-fast on Cloud #9 or on top the World or flying in space and suddenly recieves more pushes to move him to a position higher? Something higher than the top of the world? Better than Cloud #9? I’m afra…
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I wrote about a spell check workaround that works with the plain jane or wysiwyg editors on my blog a couple weeks ago. Use the Google toolbar’s spell check function; it even lets you add words to it’s dictionary and works essentially the same as WP’s. But this WP feature is a good second place alternative. What we really need is something that checks on the fly. Is that something you could whip up with AJAX? Maybe a mod on the search function that checks while you type?
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Thank you so much, that is really a wonderful feature!
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Great to see spell checking is in WordPress MU 🙂 Can’t wait for WordPress 2.1 🙂
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Sweet! Baby Jesus! Thank you! 🙂
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@Ryan B: Under Users ==> “Use the visual rich editor when writing” 😉
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Thank You
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This is great, but I would really like something for WordPress 1.5. Maybe someone knows of a plugin?
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you guys really rock! great work…
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Very thoughtful of you guys.
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@Flock Sucks:: http://matthew.delmarters.com/weblog/visual_spellcheck/
There you go!
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Very useful tool! Yahoo!
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Teh Speelcheckar!1
Andi/a> anuonced at <a href=WorrPress.com bolg taht they habe deviloped a speelckecker for WodPers..com Comunisty.
Currentcy teh spellckaer onlly avilable on WYSYWYGYG Edutor. If you”re useing HTML EDitor, you stillhave to wait, or laearn h…
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For a time, I used the WYSIWYG editor, but when my Google Toolbar spell checker wouldn’t work with it, I went back to the HTML editor. Now that the WYSIWYG editor has a spell checker, I have come back! Plus, if I need to fine tune what I see, I can click on the HTML editor button. Very nice improvement for the best blogging community!
What about a similar spell-check option for the comments?
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Who duh man ….. You duh man? Thanks much. I was tired of doing my blog with a crayon and Big Chief Notepad and having my kid check the spelling.
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I like the tool, but I’ve typed my posts in Microsoft word and on wordpress (prior spell check) and there is a big difference. I will have to try the wordpress spell check to see if it works and I’ll probably check the same post in Microsoft word to see how good it is. But I must say this is a great addition.
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Nice, but I already use the Spellbound plugin for Firefox/Mozilla, so I can add my own words, spell check any online text box I want, and stick with the uncluttered editor.
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Check your spelling, indeed.
See http://cutter.wordpress.com/2006/03/29/help-for-the-spelling-challenged/
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cheers… I’ve been using Word for its spell checker constantly, and have had to go through the problem of having to correct all the HTML problems manually.
Great addition to an already great service!
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Woohoo! Cheers guys. You are geniuses, somewhat 😀
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Thanks,
I needed that. Now if only I can remember to use it.
Thanks for setting that up.
Jim
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Guy Kawasaki’s blog. And some gems.
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Just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks for adding spell check.
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Looks good. Seeing as it is using AJAX, perhaps having a livespell function would be useful, like MS Word for instance?
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Me too, I wrote tons of posts in Word and copy-pasted
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by a sudden i found the whole rich editor disappears. what’s up? hope it back quickly.
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so ok I read how great it is, but where do I download it from ???
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Very very good job.
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Good news…
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