How to use the spell checker
- 1Paste or type your text into Your text.
- 2Tick Accept British spellings if you write colour and organise, and keep Ignore words in CAPITALS for acronyms.
- 3Press Check spelling. The dictionary downloads once (about 550 KB); results then update as you edit.
- 4Under Results, press a suggestion to replace the word everywhere, Ignore to skip it, or Add to my dictionary to accept it from now on.
The built-in example
Ths paragraph has a few mispelled words. We will recieve the samples tommorow and seperate them definately before the meeting.
Ths → Ohs, Tbs, The, Thy, Hts, T's mispelled → misspelled, dispelled recieve → receive, relieve tommorow → tomorrow seperate → separate definately → definitely
Real output. Suggestions come from Hunspell's rules (similar letters, keyboard neighbors, swapped letters) and aren't ranked by meaning, which is why “This” isn't offered for “Ths”.
How the spell checker finds mistakes
Each word is looked up in the Hunspell en-US dictionary (the same format LibreOffice, Firefox and Chrome use), read by the open-source nspell library. Hunspell stores about 49,000 base words plus rules for their forms, so “organize”, “organizes”, “reorganized” and “organizer's” are all recognized without listing each one. The check runs in a Web Worker, a background thread in your browser, so long documents don't freeze the page, and your text is never uploaded. URLs, email addresses, code in backticks, hashtags and words containing digits are skipped. A word not in the dictionary is reported with up to six suggestions; pressing one replaces every occurrence.
US and British spelling
The dictionary is American English. Tick Accept British spellings and a word that isn't in it is accepted when a standard British-to-American change turns it into a dictionary word:
| British | American | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| colour, favourite | color, favorite | -our → -or |
| organise, realisation | organize, realization | -ise → -ize |
| analyse | analyze | -yse → -yze |
| centre, fibre | center, fiber | -tre/-bre → -ter/-ber |
| catalogue | catalog | -ogue → -og |
| defence, licence | defense, license | -ence → -ense |
| travelled, modelling | traveled, modeling | doubled l |
This is a rule check, not a UK dictionary: words such as “manoeuvre” that need two unusual changes are still flagged. Suggestions are always American spellings.
Suggestions and your personal word list
Names, brands, technical terms and new words are often missing from any dictionary. Ignore hides a word until you leave the page. Add to my dictionary saves it in your browser so it is never flagged again on this device, in this tool, the online proofreader and the essay checker. Open My dictionary to see or remove saved words. Capitalized words are accepted only if the dictionary has them capitalized, so “london” is flagged but “London” is not.
What a spell checker can't catch
A spell checker looks at one word at a time. It can't tell that a correctly spelled word is the wrong one: “their” for “there”, “form” for “from”, “affect” for “effect”, “it's” for “its”, or a missing word. It also accepts any real word that a typo happens to produce (“mange” for “manage”). Read the text once more after the check, ideally aloud or after a break, and use the proofreader for the common confusions it has rules for.
Spelling vs grammar vs punctuation checks
- This spell checker: words not in the dictionary.
- [Punctuation checker](/punctuation-checker/): spacing, commas, apostrophes, quotes, brackets and capitals, with each rule explained.
- [Online proofreader](/online-proofreader/): spelling plus grammar rules (a/an, its/it's, could of, then/than, repeated words), punctuation and style hints in one pass.
- [Essay checker](/essay-checker/): length, readability and structure rather than errors.
For word and character totals, use the word counter.
Is my text private?
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your text is not uploaded to our servers.