Discussion: Spell Check

The spell check on AP no longer works for me. As my spelling is so bad it is something I rely on. I have a new computer and have only istalled Open Office. Is the spell check on AP somehow set up to associate with MS Word and not Open Office.

AP doesn't have a spell-checker per se - it's run by your browser. Either you're using a different browser, or you haven't installed an add-in that provides a dictionary.

Same browser. Only difference is OO not Word

And that browser is....?

is the browser definitely the same? could be ie8 v ie7 for example.

I use OpenOffice as my office suite (and I don't have MS Word), and spell check works for me on AP. I use Seamonkey as a browser most of the time, and sometimes use Firefox. Spell check works with either.

The version of your browser doesn't matter. It's just that your settings don't say to check your spelling. In Firefox: Tools - Options - Advanced - General - Check my spelling as I type.

Thanks cjross. I am using firefox and have followed your process. Spelling as I type is checked but it still does not work.

Try installing this add-on, it's possible you don't have a dictionary installed.

Thanks Paul That worked. The odd thing is I have never had to install that add on before, spell check just worked. However, much appreciated everyone. P.S. Go the Hawks

No worries. :)

PS. Go...err...Fitzroy! Yeah. Go Fitzroy. *waves flag*

I'm glad you fellows from "down under" are having just as much difficulty with the "mother tongue" as we in the US, another former British colony.

I wish there were more Englishmen here on a/p so that one could explain just why they developed such a convoluted, difficult language...and then cheerfully spread it around the world, for all of us to suffer with forevermore.

We don't have a problem with the mother tongue, we just have problems with the Americans spelling 'colour' wrong - not to mention enshrining it in things like the HTML spec. :)

What use is a spell check anyway? Don´t you always spell words correctly the first time...

"Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way" by Bill Bryson is a good book for those of you interested in the subject. "Made in America" is Bryson's book on the US version of English.

I read this, just yesterday, from John McIntyre, an editor at the Baltimore Sun:

I read recently a brief outburst online...complaining about the crazy idea that if enough people make an error in language, it’s then all right. (I can’t remember whether it was someone raving about irregardless or could care less or something equally pointless.) Well, that is exactly how it is. We have English because multiple generations of illiterate peasants demolished Anglo-Saxon grammar wholesale. And if enough people use a particular word or adopt a usage and agree on its meaning, then there it is.

John McIntyre works better...

Thanks, bubo!

My recommendation is The Power of Babel (A Natural History of Language), by John McWhorter. Its hard for all to become clear in one book, but this one gives it a pretty good go.

(As an aside, you may also come to understand why spell checkers are a bad idea, because spoken language always changes, while the dons of various times have decreed a written language carved in stone). (As an example, the English orthography meshes (more or less) with the way it was spoken when said dons laid it down).

But read the book. Its awesome.