These days, there is no reason to write something and send it, post it or submit it without using an online spelling check program of some kind. It’s simply too easy. While some people believe they don’t need to use an online spell checker, they’re wrong. You simply can’t actually catch every error or know how to spell EVERY word.

Now that we’ve established that you need an online spelling check program, we’ll run through the features you should look for. While there are dozens of options available, they are not all created equal. If you’re going to take the time to use a grammar and spell checker, you should make sure that it is good enough to actually help you.

Important Features of an Online Spelling Check Program

The first thing to consider when looking for an online spelling check program is to determine HOW it checks your spelling. There are basically three different approaches that can be used:

Check Each Word

This is the most simplistic version of a spell checker. It simply compares each word with the dictionary it has and identifies any word that doesn’t match a word in the dictionary. Of course, the success of this approach depends upon the size of the dictionary.

Check Common Grammar Errors

A good online spelling check program will also do a check for common grammar and capitalization errors. This includes looking for things like capitalizing common proper nouns and identifying whether “a” or “an” was used correctly.

Statistical Information

This is a much broader approach to spell checking. As you know, there are many words and grammar rules that are different based upon the context of the sentence. An online spell check program that is based on statistical information uses a tremendous amount of data to accomplish this feat. This type of spell checker must be online because of the size of the base data. This is another reason it’s a good idea to use an online spell checker instead of a version you have to download to your own computer.

Online Spell Check – For Free

They say you can’t get anything for free that is any good. However, that is not the case when you’re talking about spell checkers. You can get a quality free online spell check program that is just as good as the paid versions.

Multiple Ways to Check It

Many people make the mistake of using the first spell checker they run across. They get accustomed to it and know how it works. Then they find out that the only way to use it for their next project is to copy and paste each page of a 20 page document into the tool, separately.

Don’t let this happen to you. When you’re looking for an online spelling check program, make sure it is one that is flexible in how you give it the text that needs to be checked. Sometimes a simply copy/paste of the text is fine. However, sometimes it would be easier to upload an entire document to get it checked. There are also times when it’s a web page that needs to be spell checked, so you would want to be able to simply provide a url.  Make sure your spell checker provides you with all three of these options.

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If you’re going to take the time to spell check your document (and you should), make sure the spell checker tool you are using is going to be able to actually help you.