Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Lee33 · Jul 10, 2005, 10:44 AM

Does anyone have any good recommendations for spell checking software? I found two. One is Spell Checker 8 and costs $$39.95. The other is Excalibur and is free. Free is great if it works well and is compatible with Tiger but the website is not clear about compatibility.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks,

Lee

Randman · Jul 10, 2005, 10:54 AM

OS X has built-in spell check function for most applications.

Millennium · Jul 10, 2005, 10:59 AM

cocoAspell works well. It's no longer freeware, but the price is not fixed; you can donate any amount at this point. It works with any program which can use the system spellchecker. Does that fit your needs, or do you need something else?

Lee33 · Jul 10, 2005, 12:31 PM

Rand,
Thanks but I was looking for a spell checker that worked with everything (ie - forums, online ordering etc)

Millennium,
That sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I just took a quick look at your link but will check it out further. Thanks.

monkeybrain · Jul 10, 2005, 05:00 PM

The system spell check works in forums etc. You just need to enable it in Safari under the Edit menu. The suggestion that Millennium stated works in the same way, it just gives you more choice than the system spell checker (but I think the system one had been improved in Tiger anyway).

Lee33 · Jul 11, 2005, 07:21 AM

Thanks, monkeybrain. I'll check that out before I get a third party spell checker.

Jeepster · Aug 29, 2006, 10:22 PM

I just got a an iMac and frankly the spellchecker that comes with iWork sucks compared to the one that comes with MS Word. It doesn't check grammar, and ignores boldface lettering, I really need those features . . .any reccomendations?

THANKS

monkeybrain · Aug 29, 2006, 11:55 PM

Never use the grammar check in MS Word. It is, to put it bluntly, crap. As a proofreader I can testify it is useless and causes people more problems than it creates. Don't use it! You can google for pages that list its many inconsistencies. The dictionary in Word is pretty crap too, it doesn't know many complex words, it's like it has been simplified. (What's the point? It's just a list of words).

The one in iWorks is the system spellchecker, it does check emboldened type, at least it does in Textedit so I suppose it would in Pages too.

If you really must have a grammar check, there is probably one on Macupdate.com.

Jeepster · Aug 30, 2006, 09:33 PM

Originally Posted by monkeybrain

Never use the grammar check in MS Word. It is, to put it bluntly, crap. As a proofreader I can testify it is useless and causes people more problems than it creates. Don't use it! You can google for pages that list its many inconsistencies. The dictionary in Word is pretty crap too, it doesn't know many complex words, it's like it has been simplified. (What's the point? It's just a list of words).

The one in iWorks is the system spellchecker, it does check emboldened type, at least it does in Textedit so I suppose it would in Pages too.

If you really must have a grammar check, there is probably one on Macupdate.com.

I'll be honest with you, I think the spellchecker that comes with Word is not perfect, but 100 times better than the piece of crap we got with iWorks. iWorks misses half the words, only seems the check words in all caps when it feels like it, and doesn't do grammar. But let me check that site and see if I can get an update, thanks!