Spell checking functions are built into many tools these days including Microsoft Word, blog editing programs, and even now into browsers such as Firefox and Opera. However, this doesn’t stop web publishers or bloggers (including me!) from slipping and including an occasional spelling error into our posts.
NetMechanic aims to help. Begin using this service by entering in your URL on their website. Their robot checks your site for spelling errors and gives you a report based on its findings. You can specify a custom dictionary if you’d like the service to ignore certain words. Additionally, you can set NetMechanic to check either a single page or go drill down 20 pages into the site.
A new site called Spellr.us goes one step further. The site, currently in a closed beta, will offer hourly, daily, or weekly analysis of your site and will give you a visual image of the page containing the spelling error, annotated with strikethroughs. Pricing is hard to find on Spellr’s homepage but if it’s kept at a reasonable rate, I could easily see publishers paying for this type of service. Perhaps a more efficient way for Spellr to operate is to scrape a blog’s RSS feed and provide error notification using this as a tool.
How do you keep track of the grammatical health of your site? What’s your method of monitoring these types of issues?
[From Net@Nite via TechCrunch]
I typically write “from the hip”, which means that I may have shocking typos and grammatical errors on my blog. That said, that would be the result of haste, not ignorance! Am actually a little disappointed (in falling education standards) that we need to have spell-checkers trawling websites; why not just learn how to spell?? Or use the spellchecker in WordPress/Live Writer/other to check before posting?
Steps I take:
1. Use LiveWriter and make sure spell check is enabled (or use Word 2007).
2. If posting using the write post page on my blogging software, look out for the red squigglies that Firefox puts in (for instance it put in one under squigglies).
3. Sometimes, just read the post once more before posting.
Small tip when posting from Word 2007
Small tip when posting from LiveWriter
Hi Katherine
I too hate that spelling has become so sloppy.
However there are several reasons that despite all good intentions websites may have typos.
These include:
1) Some ecommerce sites pull content from supplier databases that may not be spell checked correctly.
2) Many blogs etc have contributors that may not spell check correctly.
3) Many large sites have many contributors that may not be as stringent as they should be running checks.
4) Some people (designers, editors etc) tweak sites directly and think the tweaks are fine but introduce errors.
We are currently collecting stats on typos on leading organisations’ websites – most have some. I certainly don’t think it is due to lack of effort on their behalf.
Kevin Garber – spellr.us
See allankirsch.tech.officelive.com for details on how to spell check large websites and more.