Spell check on the forum

[Electronpusher0]

When posting the forum software has a spell check function but this is american spelling.
Is it possible to change to UK spelling?

Not really important, just a minor niggle.

Peter

[Station X]

There is no spell checking function in the forum software. This is something provided by your own device and you can configure it as you wish.

No discussion about the merits of spell checkers please.

[paulsherwin]

As Graham says, any spell checking is done by your browser or, in the case of Android/iOS devices, the on screen keyboard. Many spell checkers do default to American English and have to be told to use a British dictionary.

[The Philpott]

...and historically, changing from US English to UK English has not been a perfect solution, since (understandably) there are errors....a lot of words to cover and some get missed.

Dave

[Nickthedentist]

Of course, if you're doing a really long paste, it pays to write it offline in "Word" or whatever, spell check it if you wish, then copy and paste it to the Forum.

If nothing else, this saves losing a lot of work if your computer or the forum does something odd.

[paulsherwin]

Beware of drafting posts in word processors. They can insert all sorts of weird 8 bit characters which can confuse the database holding the forum data and result in strange behaviour. It's best to do offline drafting using a plain text editor such as Notepad (though that doesn't do spell checking of course).

[Paul Stenning]

If you are using a word processor, copy/paste into Notepad, then copy/paste from Notepad and into the forum. The Notepad step gets rid of a lot of the problematic characters.

If you are using Firefox go to "Add-ons and Themes", add "British English Dictionary (Marco Pinto)", and remove any other non-UK ones. There are probably similar steps and dictionaries for other browsers.

[Station X]

Originally Posted by Station X

No discussion about the merits of spell checkers please.

Two posts deleted.

[Radio Wrangler]

No automatic spelling checker is good enough You have to do your own quality control, manually, if you want it to look like care went into your posting.

In a long enough post to be a reasonable statistical sample, look at the ratio of errors introduced (or attempted to be introduced) by a spelling checker where there was no error in the first place to the number of genuine errors it finds. As yet, these things are not fit for purpose. If you let them do the job for you, they make you look not fit for purpose.

Their, there, they're. Its, it's. Grocers, grocer's, grocers' Argh!

David

[Craig Sawyers]

I was listening to R4 the other morning when a now elderly lady was recounting how, at the age of 16 she was learning to touch type at a secretarial college. The tutor carried a ruler which she would crack across the knuckles of anyone looking at the keyboard.

No spellchecking, 100% right first time, and a knuckle crack if you looked at the keyboard.

How things have changed.

Now my mother was a touch typist, and in what seemed a weird thing to do at age 16 I taught myself to touch type on an old sit up and beg typewriter. Of course given that keyboards are such a feature of everyday life, it was probably one the best skills I could have learnt.

Still have to rely on spellchecker of course!

Craig

[dglcomp]

Within Edge you can now paste it as plain text which should remove any weirdness from the likes of Word.

[Station X]

Thyme two close this Fred.