Title: Aspell to check spelling Author: Solène Date: 12 February 2019 Tags: unix Description: I never used a command line utility to check the spelling in my texts because I did not know how to do. After taking five minutes to learn how to do it, I feel guilty about not having used it before as it is really simple. First, you want to install aspell package, which may be already there pulled as a dependency. In order to proceed on OpenBSD it's easy: # pkg_add aspell I will only explain how to use it on text files. I think it is possible to have some integration with text editors but then, it would be more relevant to check out the editor documentation. If I want to check the spelling in my file *draft.txt* it is as simple as: $ aspell -l en_EN -c draft.txt The parameter `-l en_EN` will depend of your locale, I have fr_FR.UTF-8 so aspell uses it by default if I don't enforce another language. With this command, aspell will make an interactive display in the terminal The output looks like this, with the word **ful** highlighted which I can not render in my article. It's ful of mistakkes! 2) foul 7) fl 3) fuel 8) UL 4) full 9) fol 5) furl 0) fur i) Ignore I) Ignore all r) Replace R) Replace all a) Add l) Add Lower b) Abort x) Exit I am asked how I want to resolve the issue with **ful**, as I wanted to write **full**, I will type 4 and aspell will replace the word **ful** with **full**. This will automatically jump to the next error found, **mistakkes** in my case: It's full of mistakkes! 2) mistake's 7) mistimes 3) mistake 8) mistypes 4) mistaken 9) stake's 5) stakes 0) Mintaka's i) Ignore I) Ignore all r) Replace R) Replace all a) Add l) Add Lower b) Abort x) Exit and it will continue until there are no errors left, then the file is saved with the changes. I will use aspell everyday from now.