0Install a spellchecker for your browser

Let me start with an admis­sion: I’m one of those ped­ants on Face­book who likes to cor­rect your spelling, punc­tu­ation and gram­mar.  Some of you will think this is per­fectly reas­on­able, whilst oth­ers will prob­ably want an explan­a­tion.  If you are one of the lat­ter read on.

The simple fact is that as a social spe­cies our exist­ence depends on com­mu­nic­a­tion, the clear­er the bet­ter.  When their only con­tact with you is vir­tu­al oth­er people will make judge­ments about you based on what is avail­able to them — includ­ing your SPG.  I cor­rect spellings on Face­book for 2 reas­ons: 1. because I’m a teach­er so it’s a habit; 2. because with mod­ern web-browsers there is quite simply no excuse for incor­rect spelling.  So, to help every­one, here is a quick guide to enabling an auto­mat­ic ‘Microsoft word like” spell-check­er in your web-browser…

A quick note — I speak “the ori­gin­al” Eng­lish, so this guide is for Brit­ish Eng­lish, but it is equally applic­able to oth­er lan­guages.  This guide is also aimed at users of Win­dows, although options may well be sim­il­ar in oth­er OSes

Fire­fox

• Install the appro­pri­ate dic­tion­ary “addon”.  e.g. Brit­ish Eng­lish Dictionary
• Restart Fire­fox if prompted

Chrome

It’s built-in!  How­ever, if it isn’t work­ing, check the settings…

• Click on the icon with 3 hori­zont­al lines at the top right
• Select ‘set­tings’
• Click on “+ Show advanced set­tings” at the bot­tom of the page
• Scroll down to the “Lan­guages” section
• Click on “Lan­guages and spellcheck­er settings…”
• Ensure “Eng­lish (United King­dom)” is highlighted
• Ensure “Enable spellcheck­ing” is ticked

Inter­net explorer

• Install Speck­ie
• Load Inter­net Explorer
• If you get a prompt “The ‘Speck­ie’ add-on from ‘Ver­so­works Pty Ltd’ is ready for use.” click “Enable”
• In the address bar enter “about:speckie”
• Click “Get more dictionaries”
• Click on the link to “Eng­lish Great Britain”
• Click “Open”
• Click “OK”
• Close Inter­net Explorer
• Reload Inter­net Explorer
• In the address bar enter “about:speckie”
• Untick “Eng­lish (United States)”
• Click Apply
• Close Inter­net Explorer
• Reload Inter­net Explorer

Safari

• Right click on a mis­spelled word in a form
• Go down to “Spelling and grammar”
• Select “Show spelling and grammar”
• In the pull-down menu at the bot­tom select “Brit­ish English”
• Close the mini window
• When a word is mis­spelled (shown with the red line) double click on it to high­light it, then right click for cor­rec­tion options.  The cor­rec­tion options don’t appear on some forms, e.g. google search, which imple­ment their own suggestions.

Opera

• Right click on a mis­spelled word
• Scroll down to “dic­tion­ar­ies”
• Select “Add/remove dictionaries…”
• Tick “Eng­lish (UK)”
• Click “Next”
• Tick “Accept license”
• Click “Next”
• Select “Eng­lish (UK) [en-GB]” as the default dictionary
• Click Fin­ish