Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Lousy Browser Spell-Checkers? 96
Long-time Slashdot reader Tablizer writes: Chrome's spell checker doesn't list the proper option for "devine" or "preditor". Soundex would match them and is relatively simple to implement, but most browsers allegedly use the Hunspell algorithm. However, Hunspell doesn't handle incorrect vowels well.
Browsers could offer a "More spelling options" menu item to bring up a wider dialog using alternative algorithms, such as Soundex. Until then, can anyone recommend good spelling plugins?
Browsers could offer a "More spelling options" menu item to bring up a wider dialog using alternative algorithms, such as Soundex. Until then, can anyone recommend good spelling plugins?
I add the words to the dictionary (Score:2)
The dictionary Mozilla has seen fit to bundle with Firefox is, frankly, trash. It is missing a plethora of common technical words which obviously ought to be in it. But this is frankly not a big problem because it is trivial to add words to the dictionary. It would be nice if it would use my words file, though. Remember when Unix software was integrated with the system? Those were the days.
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Same here. Unfortunately, these things are _really_ braindead (almost as braindead as the spellchecker in MS office), so they often do not allow direct addition after I finally made it clear to them what the word was. This works especially badly with German umlauts.
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Learn how to spell and disable that spellcheck stupidity. I've never, ever used spellcheck.
I agree. I disable spellcheck in Chrome, Firefox, and all Microsoft Office products. I do enough technical typing that its safer to never let any application change what I've typed.
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... I disable spellcheck in Chrome, Firefox, and all Microsoft Office products. I do enough technical typing that its safer to never let any application change what I've typed.
Firefox never changes what I type, it merely underlines it with a jagged red line. In those situations the deficiency usually lies with the dictionary and not with my spelling, so I simply add the word to the dictionary and am never bothered again.
I never let any program auto-correct. For one thing, as a Canadian I spell many words the British way, while most spell-checkers are American. For another, even my non-technical vocabulary has a lot of words that aren't in the spelling dictionaries.
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Also, if it underlines in red a word as non-existing when I suspect it's correct, I just search for it in an online dictionary to make sure it's correct. This seldom happens but it does. You can then even add it to Firefox dictionary. I assume one could add words to any dictionary even if not using Firefox.
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Incidentally, I still use ispell/aspell where possible. Ages older and massively better.
Re: I add the words to the dictionary (Score:2)
I was thinking priorities like getting kickbacks for spending $20M of donations buying Pocket after changing the plug-in API so that people might use it instead of ScrapBook+.
Use Grammarly! (Score:4, Funny)
Then you can get bad spelling recommendations, PLUS bad punctuation recommendations. It's the best of all worlds!
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I've never come across a spelling/grammar checker that lets you specify more than just the top level language. As an English speaker it's often worse than that; the only choice is "English (British)" which could mean a number of things, and rarely includes Oxford spellings. Or worse still just "English", which usually means American.
Same problem with grammar, Gmail tends to phrase things the American way in suggestions.
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The hunspell dictionaries in Chrome are split in en_US and en_GB.. It is a pretty common split.
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Then (no list, try omitting this word for more impact) you (who is the reader? ambiguity can muddle your message) can (try using a $0.10 word) get (too general, try the thesaurus) bad (could cast negative tone to your sentence, use the thesaurus for more impact) spelling (error:3028) recommendations (did you mean hamburger?), PLUS (are you angry? Try initial cap with lower-case) bad (like, you're really bad at this) punctuation (oh just give up) recommendations. (you really suck at writing) It's the best o
LanguageTool (Score:2)
Use LanguageTool! It is under a Free license, it has browser plugins, and in addition to spell-checking, it also has grammar and style checking. It works very well for English (American and British), German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and several other languages.
Link: https://languagetool.org/
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Here is the privacy policy:
https://languagetool.org/legal/privacy
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> Here is the privacy policy
That's a lot of text to answer a 9-word question: "Are you saving a log of user's checked words?"
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You sound like a shill.
That spell-checker is cloud-based. It's problematic from a privacy standpoint. And a "Free license" is meaningless when it's not open source, and when they can cut off or start charging for the cloud-based service whenever they want.
SoundeX isn't a speller (Score:2)
You even linked to Wikipedia, which lists it as an Indexer. There's nothing there about spell checking...!!??
Hunspell (https://github.com/hunspell/hunspell) is the algorithm used by a lot of things for spell checking. But it's really only as good as its dictionary, I guess.
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My description was meant to be colloquial, not a tech spec.
To clarify, Soundex could be used like this:
1. A word the user types is not in the Hunspell dictionary (or otherwise "fails" as a correct word.)
2. User right-clicks the marked word for spelling options.
3. If user clicks on a link called "More Spelling Options" under the ones browsers already lists (presumably) from the Hunspell engine, then user gets a new panel.
4. The panel lists matches from the Hunspell and/or browser's dictionary based on a Soun
Maybe old school, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why don't you just learn how to spell? I mean, I get that computers must have become such a crutch in your life that you use them for practically everything, but you should still have basic skills for math, spelling, feeding yourself, wiping your own ass, ...
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Agreed! Use the same spellchecker that famous writers writers used. No wait, they deliberately mispelled words and there were no standardized spellings (standardised?). Just don't use a spell checker, I mean how hard can it be? Don't use grammarly, just use good grammar instead.
And if you have a spelling mistake, then... who kares?
Are we actually creating a generation of ignorant morons who cannot function in society without computers doing all the tasks for them?
Turn it off. (Score:2, Troll)
Learn to spell.
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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. [amazingtalker.com]
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Learn to spell correctly.
FTFY.
(which is "Fixed That For You.")
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Faer Poynt....
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Is correctness implied when you look at the definition of "learn"? How do you know what he meant "correctly" to modify?
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Learn to spell correctly.
FTFY.
(which is "Fixed That For You.")
"Correctly" is in the eye of the giant eye-monster thing..
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Spellcheckers are an annoying nuisance, I always turn them off on any program which has one.
I learned to read and write at school, I have no use for them.
I know my reply may sound somewhat arrongant, but I'm always wondered why even native english speakers are so dependent on spellcheckers?
No, english is NOT my native language.
Re:Turn it off. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have the opposite anecdote. My hand has been effed since grade 4, I never learned how to write (properly) with a pen. Every single essay or written work I have ever produced was on a pc or a cellphone. Every product used has had a spell checker. My entire life since I was a preteen.
I have never, and likely will never, need to memorize the spelling of most words.
It makes me sad when I see the derision people have for that fact.
Do you realize just how finite this mortal coil is? Just how long we as Humans spend of our formative lives Memorizing times tables, the number of planets in the solar system, how to read an analog clock , how to write, how to spell, History as a whole. All of it consuming valuable brainspace, valuable years of your life.
All of it pathetic waste of time. You are going to die, and that skill is going to become useless. Let a machine do it for you. enjoy your life, don't toil uselessly at it like a machine.
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" I never learned how to write (properly) with a pen. Every single essay or written work I have ever produced was on a pc or a cellphone. Every product used has had a spell checker. My entire life since I was a preteen."
Embarrassing.
"I have never, and likely will never, need to memorize the spelling of most words."
Because you don't read, either.
"It makes me sad when I see the derision people have for that fact."
Because you are proud of your illiteracy.
"Do you realize just how finite this mortal coil is? Jus
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Sure, use the tool if the tool helps you. However these tools only slow me and many other people down. If wear glasses because I have nearsightedness then don't require that everyone use glasses, that would be absurd.
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BTW you misspelled or mistyped 'arrogant'; but a spell checker would have alerted you. See? Of course n
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Because the correct spelling of English words is kind of random?
Perhaps you could write a book about "how to write correctly"? Or about "How do I learn to see my own spelling mistakes"? Or about "How to teach writing g in a way that people learn to write without making spelling mistakes"?
The last part seems ultra important. Yet I never met a teacher who could teach writing. Only teachers that punish you for a spelling mistake. But have no idea how to teach you to avoid that mistake.
Re "Learn to spell" (Score:1)
See my reply to a similar suggestion. [slashdot.org]
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I turn it off because spellings are very often wrong. This is not the fault of the spell checker, per se, but because there are multiple spellings and multiple words that can fit into the context. When the spell checker decides to correct the spelling of my coworker's name just because it's foreign, then you know it must be disabled. It slows people down because of all the wasted time going back to fix "corrected" words and names, and putting the grammar back to what you want.
How come in my phone I am al
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Spelling is easy.
Especially in languages like German, Italien, Finnish or Japanese.
Seeing that a word is misspelled is difficult.
Especially when you actually misspelled something and autocorrection fixes into a similar word, like brake versus break.
I use Safari (Score:5, Funny)
Itâ(TM)s spell checker works very well.
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But its punctuation sucks ass.
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To be fair, the fact that it doesn't play well with Slashdot is more Slashdot's fault, though I don't like how it defaults to the fancy-pants "smart" punctuation (which is broken on Slashdot--and that's on Slashdot for not supporting Unicode).
Re: I use Safari (Score:2)
Thereâ(TM)s nothing wrong with its punctuation. This is a /. bug. /. also canâ(TM)t correctly show my countryâ(TM)s currency symbol correctly, and that has nothing to do with punctuation. But you know, feel free to keep whinging about the wrong thing and generally just pissing in to the wind.
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It's whining. Learn to spell. I guess I can't expect an Apple user to be smart.
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"Whinging [cambridge.org]" is a real word, and more appropriate than "whining" in this context.
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That's Limey language. This is America. We do don't do Limey language. Its a fucking trunk not a boot.
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Just continuing to demonstrate and prove your ignorance? Don't worry, we already got it. It was already apparent to everybody based on your first comment.
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Let me break it down for you, Mr. Insults.... Fuck Apple.
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LOL. I don't need to say anymore; _merlin's reply is enough.
Re: I use Safari (Score:1)
Wow, you must feel stupid. Can I give you a cloth to wipe the egg off your face? It always entertains me when somebody too ignorant to know their own level of ignorance lays in to somebody in a nasty way⦠and reveals their ignorance to everybody looking on.
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I feel just fine. Wanna feel me?
Makes no sense (Score:2)
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In general the IT industry spends too much time chasing the latest buzzwords rather then perfecting existing technologies. USA is a throwaway culture, and our IT mirrors this. I can rant on for days on perfectly good tools that merely needed enhancements, but were tossed to chase fads.
> If user experience mattered, the whole e-commerce side of the textile industry would have shifted to a standardized sizing chart based on accurate and pertinent anatomical measurements to limit waste and facilitate shopp
Just piling on (Score:2)
In your head it's 10 or 20 years ago, when software like us old timers used, was a tool. It was used to get stuff done. Now, software is closer to entertainment, notwithstanding social media and actual entertainment, and the primary purpos
In my day... (Score:2)
Spell checker!? In my day, browsers didn't have spell check, and we liked it that way! Now excuse me, I have clouds to yell at.
I don't (Score:5, Insightful)
These things should be left to and built into the OS. Having n applications maintain a library through n different ways is a recipe for disaster.
MacOS does spell check as you type in any application, Linux can emulate the same behavior in Xorg by routing your keyboard through a custom program.
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That would require coordination between MS, Apple, Google, and the Linuxes (Lini?). It would be more logical, a better factored universe, but that's too unlikely with humans.
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Again, if Apple and Xorg can do it, so can others.
Re: I don't (Score:2)
The stuff built in to macOS is great. It annoys me to no end that Microsoft reinvent the wheel in Office and it doesnâ(TM)t work as well. No right click and choose âoelook-upâ in their apps either. There was a time when I could copy a word from a message in Outlook and paste it in to the subject field and then get the normal macOS experience, but Microsoft fixed that âoebugâ.
I either take the time to actually spell (Score:2)
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> if I just can't remember how to spell a word google's "did you mean" will find it.
Some browsers give you the option to search a flagged word in the browser's default search engine. While helpful, it's still more steps, and a privacy risk, since the search engine now knows about a word you used, and will probably display spam for it (including in affiliated sites).
Use a third party language tool (Score:2)
Do not use (Score:2)
I simply ignore the spellcheckers.
Iyt duz nawt hert me muchh.
Seriously though, I'm kinda a fiend for proper spell and grammar checking.
And bad spellcheck drives me up and through the wall.
Vivaldi has an option (Score:1)
I assumed this was a baked-in Chromium option that was carried over. But maybe it isn't??
Deal with spellcheckers and ChatGPT the same way (Score:2)
I never use autocorrect with spellcheckers, and I never copy and paste with ChatGPT. With both tools, I get some information that I then use my own mind to parse and determine if the information is correct and what I want to do with that information. Same thing with the obstacle detection on my car, which is sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect. It doesn't bother me because I recognize it as a computer algorithm with less than 100% and greater than 0% accuracy. The false obstacle warning doesn't bo
Both of these work for me (Score:2)
In Chrome there is an option for "Enhanced spell check", basically it does a good search for them when you right click on it, both of these presented the correct spelling with it.
Warning on that feature (Score:1)
Chrome:
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Yeah, and?
I thought about adding a blurb about that, but it's like already on the tin. There are tons of stuff in Chrome that sends stuff to Google. If that is a concern for you, don't use Chrome/Google.
Frankly I would trust Google over some random 3rd party plugin.
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If one of the other browsers added that feature and advertised "better than Chrome's checker, and doesn't send anything to the cloud", then Chrome would be tempted to follow suit.
I normally use FireFox, but sometimes have to use Chrome and Edge.
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Yeah perhaps, but it seems like that is difficult to do. Office/Word has had a spell check for decades and it is still trash, I mangle words bad enough even after multiple revisions Word will still not know the (relatively common word) I was aiming for.
The Chrome offline version seems about equal to Word.
of with there heds (Score:2)
Do it the old fashioned way. Turn off the spell checker and learn to spell.
Its by design. (Score:2)
How Do I Deal With Wonky Spell Checkers? (Score:2)
Sometimes squeezing off a few rounds from my 12 gauge shotgun will solve the matter promptly.
Works on them pesky "revenuers" that keep comin' around the cookers !
.
/sarcasm
Just turn it off. (Score:1)
How about (Score:2)
Learning to f'ing spell and form sentences. I don't expect my German spelling or grammar to be correct, mostly because I don't speak German. But I do expect my English (American) spelling and grammar to at least be of adult level, because, you know, basic education.
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Well for some of us that isn't an option. Take a fair bit of dyslexia and ADHD, mix that with a Florida education and spelling just isn't a thing. Given the Florida education I consider it a win that I can form words or covert O2 to CO2. A decent spell checker goes a long way to making my Florida English almost comprehendible.
More powerful assistive technologies benefit everyone but some of us more than others.
Re: "Shuddup and memorize!" [paraphrased] (Score:2)
I tend to mix up similarly looking/spelled words in my head. The training exercises to overcome this would be time-consuming, especially if I don't want to have to refresh it all in a few years. I'm not Shelden Cooper.
Is it rational to spend roughly 40 hours a year training/refreshing my head, or just use a spell-checker? What is your break-even hour number? How are you computing "rational use of time"?
I've rarely had a problem? (Score:2)
My spelling is unusually fine but, I may make a typo, and there are some words (probably stolen from French or something) that are spelled so incomprehensibly I can't keep them in mind. So, the spelling checker is always on. I'd feel foolish to make mistakes when there is a readily-available advisor to prevent it.
That said, I have to believe that the author here has never actually USED the Soundex algorithm, which is simple, fast, and almost completely useless. If you want it to suggest "brick" when you wro
Suggestions work for me, but dicts are small (Score:2)
I'm using Firefox and Chromium on Debian with their "English (United States)" spelling dictionaries. When I type "devine" and "preditor" into this text field, it suggests "devise" and "divine" as the top two suggestions for the former and "predictor" and "predator" for the latter. Chromium does the same.
The only issue with these systems is that they're not very comprehensive, missing items like "bartending", "customizable" (present in Firefox, absent in Chrome), "forecasted" (present in Chrome, absent in