SEO Advice: Spell-check your web site
Here’s some quick advice. If you’re going to ask people to give you money, spell-check your site. For example, here’s a banner from an SEO site I heard about:

It should be spelled “guarantee,” not “garuntee.” By the way, I can hear the Kentuckian jokes now, and you can just stop.
Worst-case, ask a friend to look over your site for typos just like you would with a resume. If your objective is to get someone to give you money, the effort is definitely worth it.
If you have a UNIX webhost, there are a variety of programs that can spell-check your docs, including spell or ispell. If you search for [spell check web page], you can also find sites that offer spell-checking of live web pages. I found and tried this service in five minutes and it worked fine. You get a useful service for free, and they offer the option to upgrade to a paid package. Offering a useful service to visitors is a great way to attract repeat visitors and links. There’s often a lot of room for improving on existing services, too. For example, the free tool I found flagged a lot of words like Abondance, Harmonix, JavaScript, etc. It would be an easy improvement over that free tool if you added an option to ignore words that were capitalized, for example. There’s also the spell-check on webforms that the Google Toolbar offers, and there are numerous plugins for stuff like WordPress that does spell checking.
John Walker has an interesting method of dealing with typos: one strike and you’re out. Essentially, you stop reading a message after the first misspelling you hit. On a quick sample of Slashdot discussion, he found that
a total of 34 words were read before the respective messages struck out, from a total of 444 words in the original postings (not counting headers or identification information). Striking out the messages thus eliminated more than 90% of the text you’d otherwise have read...
All the more reason to spell well. ![]()
- SEO Advice: check your own site
Remember a while ago when I said that you should check your website for spam before doing a reinclusion request? In general, any time you... - Reminder: check your sites
I'm catching up on my RSS and my email. There's the typical run-of-the-mill emails, like the emails to Googlebot: Good day Googlebot! We are an... - SEO Advice: clean house before press releases
(Just a quickie post) A quick tip related to checking your own site: if you're going to send out a press release about your SEO... - Guest post: Vanessa Fox on Organic Site Review session
I almost made it. I got through one day of a three day conference, and I was still blogging, caught up on email, and I'd...
Dave Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 10:06 pm
lukilly i hav had a good edumecation and doent nead a spel checker
Robert G. Medford Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
They got “Don’t” wrong as well.
Matt Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
Geez, I missed the Dont. Sigh.
Darren Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
Well that is one way to get around ever having to give anyone their money back. They can just claim it was a moneyback “garuntee” which everyone knows is French for “ripped off”.
Harith Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
Good morning Matt
“By the way, I can hear the Kentuckian jokes now, and you can just stop.”
Lets hear one of those Kentuckian jokes
Have a great day and a successful “spam falling” week.
Matt Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
Tell you what: I’ll tell one tomorrow, Harith.
It has been a successful “spam falling” week on the Pacific Rim. When I talked about going all i18n in 2006, people didn’t expect that we’d start out and go clockwise instead of counter-clockwise.
Adam Senour Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 11:13 pm
There’s one very interesting problem that stems from all of the “spill chukking” that doesn’t get discussed.
What happens to the person who beleaves that there spelling is correct and that everone else is spelling the words rong?
One of my clients actually got chewed out in an email by a customer because the client neglected to apply the “I before E except after C” rule to a word.
The problem: the word in question was “height”.
So, as ridiculous as it sounds, sometimes it’s better to spell things incorrectly. I do it quite intentionally to communicate with some of my clients, for example.
Thu Said,
January 22, 2006 @ 11:57 pm
“height”
During a job interview, I was asked to hand-write html code on the whiteboard. I can usually do so, but I had done a night shift before the interview so I was a bit sleep deprived. I was doing fine until I got stuck on the word “height”. I couldn’t figure which vowel went first.
I think if I could have typed the code out, I wouldn’t have had that issue because my hands would remember the typing motions better than the writing gestures of the word since I rarely write these days. Plus, I’m more used to seeing the word on a computer screen, and it looked funny on the whiteboard in my handwriting.
wilson chua Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 12:44 am
If this is an adword ad, the wrong spelling would have been flagged at the ad creation level. The spelling checker is built-in! Although it does have a lot of false positives, like when i’m putting in terms that are specific to our country. (PHilippines)
By the way, is there any truth to an article i just read from Dan Thies
Editor, Inside Out Marketing :
“To get accurate data, set your campaign options to limit distribution to Google.com only. You do this by making sure the boxes that say “search sites in Google’s network” and “content sites in Google’s network” are unchecked in the “campaign settings” screen. This keeps your ad from
being displayed on AOL, among other places.”
Simon Dickson Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 1:02 am
I’ve certainly applied the one-strike rule when I’ve been recruiting, and I’m looking at a big pile of résumés. You’ve got to start applying some kind of rules to reduce the pile! And, especially if I’m recruiting for jobs in marketing, I can’t expect you to take your work seriously if you can’t at least spellcheck what is effectively your promotional leaflet.
Rob Said Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 1:25 am
Does the “striking out” rule also mean that you shouldn’t link to such spelling errors. If so, two posts down you did just that. The post regarding the Bush Administrations request of Google data included this wonderful line:
“Yahoo got a request, and I’m guessing compled”
Hard to tell whether that’s supposed to be “complied” or “crumpled”, I prefer the latter :-p
Aimee Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 1:33 am
Hello Matt,
Frgive me to write this letter in your blog, didn’t match this article’s subject, because I can’t find your contact mail.
I need your help, one of our company new sites: http://www.ceconline.com which lanuched at Dec 15,2005, the old site http://www.cec.globalsources.com was 301 redirect to this new one, at beginning, the new site was indexed about 4,000 pages in google, (note: I’m in China search), but today, I see it has 691 pages indexed only, but I can see it has 281,000 pages indexed in 64.233.179.104 server.
The traffic is very important to us, can you give some thread what happend in our site? can you give some information about google DC’s working?
Thank you!
Regards,
Aimee
10080:BTG174 Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 1:49 am
Hmm
One strike and your out well thats a lot of CISCO docs out o fthe window

David Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 3:21 am
>When I talked about going all i18n in 2006, people didn’t expect that we’d
>start out and go clockwise instead of counter-clockwise.
because it’s much easier to clean the hawaii index than the greenland one?
RobA Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 3:40 am
Everyone knows American’s can’t spell anyway...
Aluminium, Colour just two examples
Henry Phillips Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 4:06 am
Of course, if you optimise your site for the word “garuntee”, or indeed any of the misspellings between “guarantee” and its cognate “warranty”, you are likely to pick up traffic from people (a) who don’t care and (b) may be more likely to fall for whatever it is that you are purportedly garunteing...
graywolf Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 4:15 am
I must say I find the attitude you spelling elitists very disconcerting, is there no place in the world for those of us who are typographically challenged?
Hamtoucher Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 4:59 am
I used to work like this, immediately dismissing sites which had poor grammar, but if you Google [photos] and [photo's] ( http://www.googlebattle.com/index.php?domain=photos&domain2=photo%27s&submit=Go%21 ) you will find that far more than 1000 times as many occurrences of the apostrophe being omitted than the correct abbreviation.
What with Americans’ spelling being different to Englishmen’s spelling as well, it is hard to know where to draw the line.
There is a sign above Becky Falls which reads ‘Danger, Bowlders are slippery.’. Much amused I mentioned this to staff and was told that this was deliberate - misspelling draws attention much more than correct spelling - perhaps having a howler in your banner is a good thing from a marketing (*spits*) perspective?
The ‘Dont’ is unforgivable, however.
effisk Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 5:25 am
Je suis content de voir qu’il existe toujours des gens qui se sentent concernés par les problèmes d’othographe en anglais.
Nous avons les mêmes problèmes en français : méconnaissance de l’orthographe et des règles de grammaire les plus élémentaires, fautes volontaires et messages au format SMS, et les anglicismes.
Aujourd’hui, personne ne sait plus faire la différence entre un manchot (penguin) et un pingouin (auk), etc.
Now back to your English problem, I think the most widespread mistake is “its” instead of “it’s”. It makes me jump out of my seat every time I see it.
An I just keep bouncing...
Julie Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 5:35 am
Spelling and grammatical errors are completely unacceptable in the business world. If you are trying to win people’s trust or business, take the extra time to proofread before you publish.
If someone is trying to sell me something and doesn’t know when to use “where” or “were” or “to” and “too”, you can be that I won’t ever be a customer. It drives me insane when people spell things wrong.
Then there’s also the problem of people who write loads of bullshit on their pages that make no sense whatsoever. And if they’ve asked your opinion of it and you tell them the truth, they still believe they’ve written the world’s best sales pitch.....but I won’t even get into that........
Ryan Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 6:08 am
a total of 34 words were read before the respective messages struck out, from a total of 444 words in the original postings (not counting headers or identification information). Striking out the messages thus .. I stopped reading it at the word “thus”.
Connie Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 6:36 am
Spell checkers are great. But they do no point out the difference between there, their, know, known etc. Even with a good spell checker you can have errors.
Fire Fox has a spell checker plugin. I use it all the time.
Ryan Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 6:40 am
it’s not just spelling and grammar. Acronyms are a big problem too..
So many companies talk about ROI, CRM etc without ever defining it.
Sure, us professionals know what it means.. but many of their readers don’t.
John Scott Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 6:54 am
One thing I have to say for this post is that it brings the SEO industry closer to being see as it should. A lot of SEO “businesses” are nothing more than one guy in a basement drinking a Big Gulp and changing some meta tags or copy/pasting keyword dense text some from some other web page. Kudos, Mr. Cutts.
Michael Curry Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 7:08 am
I’ve read (and blogged about) Walker’s strikeout idea before. I like it. It always amazed me to see the egregiously bad spelling and grammar strewn about the web..
Now, is Google working on an automated strikeout filter for inclusion into the Google toolbar?
Ryan Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 7:28 am
yeah. I’ve seen a lot of “web development” companies who add SEO on as a service simply because their clients request it..
They know nothing about it, but aren’t afraid to charge that extra 2k/ month for adding it on.
I actually worked with one company who told me that I was wasting my time telling clients to write fresh, on-topic content, and work on link building..
It’s downright funny.
David Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:10 am
Matt,
About the security codes on this site and spell checking
Now get back to choping down spam sites.
I know where there is an interlinked 4000 domain MFA directory forest, sharpen that double biited beauty and start swinging.
Rick Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:11 am
The google toolbar has an excellent spell check that I use instead of my CMS spell check.
Also, sometimes I build sites that rely on poor spelling in order to attract website visitors. For example, there are 46m pages in Google for “Mediterranean” (proper spelling).
There are 349,000 for “mediteranean” (wrong spelling).
You can build a pretty nice business on wrong spellings. (I just wish Google wouldn’t give the proper spelling at the top of the page!!)
Matt - Does the Googlebot give negative SEO to folks who spell badly?
Smoke2Much Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:20 am
With the wonderful education in our country, some high school graduates can’t even read and write! It’s sad to see how dumb the majority of the people really are. I see it all over, not just on the web and it’s not only spelling, but grammer is horrible too. Optimizing for spelling mistakes pulls in a decent amount of hits as we all know.
Ryan Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:26 am
yeah. I actually spelled homonym wrong on one of my websites once, and got about 10-15 vists / day for it..
I decided to actually work the word “hominym” into the text on the page somehow, as most people who confuse homonyms can’t actually spell the word.
noslang.com/spelling.php not linked, but just in case you were curious as to the page.
Clint Dixon Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:39 am
http://www.seo-contests.com/
Clint Dixon Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:46 am
Matt
You seem a fair enough guy but I find one problem in all this spelling madness.
At 6′0 210lbs my hands are larger than the average ‘typing model hand’ anyway as I am sure many van relate to fingers and hands are at times not well suited for keyboards..
Add in an ergonomic model like the one I use thinking it will help the wrists and it is very easy for anyone to see why many of us are fluent in typonese.
Who is Google to find someting rong wid dis??
Plus if uusse ever bin to souff filfthydelpheea uuse wood no we spell wat we sai
Yo
Eric Giguere Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 9:03 am
The problem with the “one strike you’re out rule” is that you might actually lose out on some important information that way. For example, the wonderful ResearchBuzz newsletter *deliberately* includes misspellings in its content in order to get past spam filters. There’s gotta be a better way.
Adam Senour Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 9:23 am
It helps to spell “grammar” correctly when you’re making a point about it.
Huvet Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 9:58 am
I didn’t found any other way to contact you than through comments. This is a fantistic URL for you to write a post about: http://eclipsewiki.editme.com/WST
Looks like any other site until you check the source at the bottom
Ryan Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 10:04 am
wow, every page on the site is like that.
:: ponders the thought::: How long before somebody puts out a CMS that adds their links like that to every post?
Fritz Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 10:07 am
Misspelling is a technique for ranking highly for popular and competitive keywords. In spite the spelling checkers used by SEs, plenty of people still use misspelled words in their queries. One of the more interesting examples I’ve seen is “oogle earth,” for which Google offers no alternative suggestions.
Joe Hunkins Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 11:18 am
Spelling schmelling ..... Matt you are such an ... eltitist!
Jeff Raab Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
I can relate to the comment about “when you’re so sure you’re right”. When I was a wee lad an elementary school teacher made quite an example of me. She was grading papers and in front of the entire class she asked me how to spell “A LOT”. Well, I was pretty sure this was one word, so I confidently blurted out A-L-O-T. When asked how confident I was of the spelling, I replied 100%. She then asked me to walk over to the classroom dictionary and “look it up”. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find it.
Ever since then I spell/grammar check ALL of my work - a lot.
Bob Gladstein Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 1:34 pm
Why is this categorized as “SEO Advice?” I think anyone publishing anything ought to remember to do that. I see typos everywhere.
In fact, I’d say the only thing about misspellings (there’s a commonly misspelled word for you) that’s specifically related to SEO is that some of us (no, not me) will optimize a page for a misspelled word in order to grab the people who put a typo into their query and ignore the “Did you mean” link on the SERP. So people create pages like http://www.windowshutters.biz/windoe-shutters.html to take advantage of it (either that, or they can’t spell either). Either that, or they’ll optimize a page for “windoes” with content like “You’re here because you misspelled the word ‘windows.’ Please click here to go the correct page.”
What a Maroon Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
I firmly believe that email and text messaging are primary causes for the demise in good spelling and grammar habits. Just like the words we use, how we write conveys an image.
Love this english teacher’s blog entry, http://mr-skipper.blogspot.com/2005/08/spelling.html, about the freshmen students and their ability to spell.
A Baker at http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=8&threadID=187343&messageID=1928725 has a similar perspective.
Hone Watson Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
There are plenty of people who suck at spelling who still make a tonne of money in the business world. Whats the big deal about spelling? Words change over time anyway.
Take a look at written english from shakespeares time and it looks completely different.
Ben Pate Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
Thats like a commercial in my area for Metro PCS a cell phone company. The add makes a joke on a miss spelling.
It says, “umlimited minutes”.
Aaron Wall Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 8:58 pm
I make lots of spelling errors.
One time one of them meant one of my pages was 1 of only 2 misspelled pages in Yahoo!’s index for a term that earned me a few thousand dollars for misspelling it.
OOOPPPPPSSSSSSSS!
David Said,
January 23, 2006 @ 9:04 pm
We get many users that post questions to our site. Many times we leave their questions as they are. Does Google frown upon this?
IncrediBill Said,
January 24, 2006 @ 12:44 am
Matt,
Being typographically correct is not always synonymous with traffic and earnings.
I have to agree with Aaron on this one as my wife made a minor typo on a major category heading on a new web site in a fairly competitive area and suddenly traffic started flowing in surprisingly.
I looked at her web stats and started laughing and then told her the traffic was coming from a typo and her knee-jerk reaction was to go fix it which got me yelling “ARE YOU CRAZY? IT’S YOUR ONLY SOURCE OF TRAFFIC!”
We left it alone and now she’s on top for a typo and smiling away
Sigmon Said,
January 24, 2006 @ 10:20 am
LOL fruit cakes thats awesome.
Ps I just noticed that all the google cache has gone, is it a big update or a mistake ??
Thanks Sigmon
Ron Said,
January 24, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
What about clients who fashion trademark names such as, for example, GetRclean or GoodSmackGum? (both fictional)
... combining words for the sake of marketing or the development of proprietary products or services.
I have a client which has many names like this which I know do not pass any spell-check. Is it to the detriment of the client to have such product names - names which would never pass a spell-check?
Ne1home Said,
January 24, 2006 @ 6:09 pm
Matt,
Serious question:
I’ve quoted Chaucer at length on one of our pages, how does G handle Olde Englifh Fpelling?
Will the page be marked down by the algo because it perceives it to have spelling errors, when in fact it doesn’t?
I have many pages like this by other historical authors.
Mike Dammann Said,
January 25, 2006 @ 6:39 am
There should be a distinction between blogs and sites when it comes to the importance of correct spellings. I don’t see the need on a blog or a forum to be perfect. One a site yes, but not somewhere where time is a factor when it comes to getting your posts in.
colin_h Said,
January 27, 2006 @ 8:54 am
In these days of search engine keyword saturation, sometimes the only way that an seo can compete is to pick up the scraps by deliberately spelling incorrectly. We have to remember that the key to finding something online is accuracy in searching, not everyone is accurate. Therefore there are a load of scraps to pick up if you don’t mind looking a bit silly. In fact some words (I’m sure everyone knows this) are habitually spelt incorrectly and the competition online is nearly as hot for the mistake as it is for the accurate spelling.
All the Best
Col
someone Said,
January 28, 2006 @ 8:56 am
It’s good you’re the best SEO out there so that you can attack the others. It sure is “embarassing” to see misspelling on large banners, but I wonder how well you would spell any word in any other language than your native (uhm, your only I mean)... Remember, boy, the Internet is global, not English. It’s what’s under the surface that matters, to good people.
malcolm pugh Said,
January 31, 2006 @ 10:32 am
do you know of a checker which looks for contiguous or alternate words being same/contained in the other?
as in as far as or be believed or a new address
or just one that does alternate word. i used to be a systems programmer but am also lazy enough not to want to have to learn perl or load up c type languages to code it up when someone has done it already for sure.........
i like your blog style. i used to work for geac/apak in seventies.
now run a teddy bears site.......there is a moral there somewhere.
malc rubery england
Carol Said,
January 31, 2006 @ 7:38 pm
“For example, here’s a banner from an SEO site I heard about:”
Is it three strikes and you’re out for grammar also? LOL
Carol
Sue Said,
February 6, 2006 @ 8:49 am
Matt,
I’d like to subscribe to just your Google/SEO blog but when I grabbed the RSS link, it gave me stuff across topics. Are you by any chance planning on refining that?
Thanks!
Sue
Chuck Gould Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 8:48 am
Matt,
Could you tell me if this company is “blacklisted” and spamming? I have an associate doing business with them, and they claim that they use Google for SEO but I’ve heard otherwise. The company is GDS International, and the sites are:
http://www.gdsinternational.com
http://www.cxoamerica.com
http://www.extendedretail.com
The last two are the publications they put out, and claim that they send out strategic marketing campaigns through Google to an extended readership for their advertisers. Another associate of mine said that he’s been told they are blacklisted for spam.
Thanks for the help,
Chuck
Callahan Said,
February 13, 2006 @ 7:34 pm
Kentucky? Isn’t that where signs and bumper stickers say, “Drive Smart” instead of, “Drive Smartly”? (Of course, there’s a famous computer company that used to use, “Think Different”, showing that they think differently about English...) And why can’t you use, “fastly” just as you’d use “quickly”? And is it, “e-mail” or, “email”? And then there’s that strange, “ghoti” thing...English!!!
Anyway, maybe you can help me with a little homework problem:
If there are exactly 30 seats in a room, and exactly 30 students to be assigned to them, and the instructor (let’s say his name is, “Ken K.”) assigns students seats randomly on a daily basis--what is the probability that at least one student will end up in the same seat on days one and two?
P.S. I’ve done a little programming in the past--can you get me a job at Goggle?
Bob
Bruce Mewhinney Said,
February 23, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
Don’t have much faith in spell-checkers, thanks. Actual “copy-editing” (by at least one other set of hopefully professional editorial eyes) is much mo’ better. For one thing, spell-checkers can’t tell when the writer is merely hacking with the language intentionally and colloquially, and spell-checkers have no sense of CONTEXT.
“Context”? When I was an editor at the ol’ MacUser Magazine, a senior editor named “Abby” had a Wall of Shame outside her office door. It displayed actual hard-copy evidence of the blind faith shown by other magazine editors, PR press-release writers, and advertising copywriters in their proofreading precision. All of the displayed spelling and grammatical errors were the sort of things routinely approved by spell-checking software.
The acknowledged favorite posted on the Wall of Shame was an announcement issued by a newly-appointed top executive at a Highly-Prominent multinational electronics corporation most famous for laser printers. He had sent (to all computer-magazine editors in America) a press-release announcing his status as the company’s new “Pubic Relations Director.” Now THAT is a spell-checker worth using.
Poisoned Monkey Said,
March 1, 2006 @ 5:48 am
Hamtoucher Said: ‘I used to work like this, immediately dismissing sites which had poor grammar, but if you Google [photos] and [photo’s] you will find that far more than 1000 times as many occurrences of the apostrophe being omitted than the correct abbreviation.’
Photo is an accepted word unto itself and in wide-spread, common usage; hence ‘photos’ does not need an apostrophe unless it is in the possessive tense or an abreviation.
Matt Said,
October 26, 2006 @ 7:57 am
I agree that spelling mistakes can drive customers off very fast. I have, however, found that in some cases, a simple misspelling can create a “low hanging fruit” in search engine optimization results. Of course, you need to “plan” these misspellings right...so yes, you should always spell check your work, but a “Britney” Spears and a “Britny” Spears can take you far at times!.
Ex GDS International Employee Said,
November 16, 2006 @ 6:04 pm
Re the GDS issue.
It’s probably too late now but the company is not legitimate. I once worked there and can safely say they have not been barred because they do not carry out the marketing operations they claim. I would advise your colleague to steer well clear but I’d imagine I’m $11,000 USD too late.
Regards
Paintball Said,
February 10, 2007 @ 8:55 pm
Matt,
If we have a forum on our site and your users are constantly using misspelled words, does this have any sort of detrimental effects on my SERPs?
Chris Fielding Said,
June 21, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
I found this post while doing a google search for a website spell checker and found the netmechanics one quite useful but hate having to wait for results to be emailed to me.
In my travels I’ve found two others that are quite useful for quickly spell checking a website (and that are free).
iwSpell
Ekstreme Spell Checker
Hope they help.
Simon Dance Said,
August 22, 2007 @ 9:05 am
Paintball: Good questions... be interested to hear Matt’s comments. I guess it is even more important with the duplicate content argument...
Si
Mark Said,
September 28, 2007 @ 4:54 am
I found a free online spell checker that will crawl your site for you:
http://www.furtheronline.co.uk/site-spellcheck.aspx
Karri Paradi Said,
October 8, 2007 @ 7:06 am
Actually, we’ve never found any spell checker to be be perfect (but you all know that). I think that’s why this company - http://www.texttrust.com - uses software and people when it spell checks web sites. Very neat service that looks like it will solve most of the debate above.
Karri
Rocky Said,
November 1, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
Google’s “Did you mean?” has become an enabler for atrocious spelling. I’ve become too reliant on it.
I still can’t remember how to spell “Albuquerque,” because every time I need to spell it, I just type something that approximates it into Google. Without Google, I would have memorized it.
Here’s a blog post I wrote about how technology affects language:
http://blog.agrawals.org/2007/10/14/technologys-affects-on-our-language/
And yes, I do know the difference between affect and effect. Just had a typo when I made the post; SEO keeps me from changing it.
Jake Said,
December 2, 2007 @ 9:39 am
My brother and I put together a new website spell checker a few days ago at http://www.spellery.com
It’s still a work in progress, but the functionality is increasing every day! : )
Bob Longman Said,
December 28, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
Spell check’s fine, but what about grammar? Ain’t there no good live grammar-checking sites?
(By the way, re US math education: everyone knows that 4+8=48.)
Acronyms Said,
February 24, 2008 @ 12:41 am
Use FF for spell check
Chompy Said,
March 7, 2008 @ 8:44 am
I use a tool called inspyder insite to spell check my sites. It makes checking larger sites easier since it crawls page by page (hard to do with the FF spell checker). http://www.inspyder.com
Travis Said,
March 18, 2008 @ 9:18 am
I wrote a general website checker a while back. You give it a URL and it’ll do a spell check (using aspell with a slightly-improved dictionary), meta scan, keyword check, etc.
It isn’t very pretty, but it does the job fairly well and outputs a nicely formatted report at the end.
Haven’t added a crawling function yet so it only does one page at a time but...enjoy!
DistinctScan: http://www.distinctquality.com
Farrhad Said,
April 29, 2008 @ 4:31 am
Poor guys! Must have lost tons of customers......hahaha