I'm not a bad speller, not by nature, anyway. I'm a once-good speller gone insecure, if not bad, after fifteen years of writing on a computer instead of on paper. I've become dependent upon spell checking tools, I hate to admit.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, most blogging tools, including Movable Type (MT) and WordPress, don't have a built-in spell checker. I guess maybe weblog software developers think that bloggers don't care about misspelled words [hooray! I spelled "misspelled" correctly on the first try!] or that they'll write in Microsoft Weird™ or a front-end application and then paste/post the entry into the blogging tool.
Someone did eventually write a spell check plug-in for MT, which I tried to install about two years ago. I found the installation extremely complicated and not worth the effort. Then — and I can't remember how — I learned about a free spell checker for Internet Explorer, called ieSpell. It allows you to right-click and check the spelling of all form fields in the active browser window. It's an excellent little tool that has saved me from my poorly spelling self every day for over a year.
Then, along came Firefox and all the buzz surrounding it. I finally downloaded it about a two weeks ago, and I can see why everyone likes it so much: it's lightening fast compared to IE. But I haven't used it much because I need a spell checker for my blog writing and editing, and Firefox doesn't have one built in.
I'm not sure why it took me two weeks to think of this, but finally today I had an epiphany: "Uh, dumbass, Google 'firefox + spell check' and see what you get." So I did. And the top hit was a free product called SpellBound on SourceForge.net. I'll let the geeks describe SpellBound for you:
Article comments
1 - DrPat
Blogger's online application also has a built-in spell checker. It's not as intuitive as MSWord's - for example, if you misspell "moist" as "miost", a common inversion typo, it will propose "mist" or "miopic", but not "moist". It does have the ability to learn, however.
And it's free.
2 - bhw
Good point, DrPat. I haven't used Blogger in a long time, so I don't know what features it does and doesn't offer. But for the nonhosted blog software, the biggies don't seem to offer what I consider to be a basic feature at this point. I don't know how MT could release v 3.0 without spell checking. It's insane.