Google Spell Check

a Sublime Text Package

Sublime Text 2 version: https://github.com/noahcoad/google-spell-check/tree/st2
Sublime Text 3 version: https://github.com/noahcoad/google-spell-check/tree/st3
Package Control Info: https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Google%20Spell%20Check

Description

Use Google magic to fix spelling. Replaces the selected text with Google's spelling correction. Google has a far better spell checker than most tools.

Watch this quick 1:30 min video showing it in action.

This does not replace the built-in spell checker, offer a list of suggestions, or adds words to the built-in dictionary. Instead it replaces the selected text with the Google search page's recommended spelling. It's like magic. Outright uncanny how accurate Google can be. Text isn't affected if Google thinks you've got it right.

There are several problems with most typical spell checkers:

1. Lack of Frequency, most use grammatical syntax 'sounds like' numeric lookup tables, but don't know how frequent a misspelling is, google sees misspellings all the time so they have a much better idea of what you're after
2. No Help w Names, company names like flikr tumblr or say I'm talking about scifi author jon scalzi most would say Jon and no idea on scalzi because they look one word at a time, google search considers the whole phrase and popular names together to correct to john sculzi
3. Limited Dictionary, most use somewhat limited dictionaries, whereas google has the world of words available to it, like hackathons, scifi, craigslist
4. Lack of Context, most only check the word itself, not taking into consideration the context you're using the word or phrase in
5. Just Suck, like Sublime's spell checker has no idea what do to with: avalible, finanicals, maitenence

BTW, this uses a standard Google search page results instead of the Google API. This is nice in that an API key isn't required, but isn't 100% officially supported, so Google changing their URL schema could break the plugin.

Installation

any of these...

• Get through the awesome Sublime Package Control as Google Spell Check (pending approval from wbond)
• Download and unpack into your sublime packages folder a version for: Sublime Text 2 or Sublime Text 3
• Git clone into your sublime packages folder
  Sublime Text 2: git clone --branch st2 https://github.com/noahcoad/google-spell-check.git
  Sublime Text 3: git clone --branch st3 https://github.com/noahcoad/google-spell-check.git

How to Use

1. Select some text in the editor or put cursor under a word to check
2. Run the google_spell_correct command
   • via hotkey ctrl+alt+g
   • via right-click context menu > Google Spell Check
   • via Command Pallet, ctrl+shift+p (command+shift+p in OSX) > Google Spell Check
3. be patient, may take a second for google to return a result
   If nothing changes, google probably thinks your spelling is okay, or has no idea what you're talking about. Try selecting some more words to give google context.

Update Notices

• 2013-10-14, Sublime Text 3 version added. Updates going forward will only be made to the Sublime Text 3 version of the package.

Finally

See also: You may like this Open URL sublime package.

Author: @noahcoad writes software for the heck of it and to make life just a little more efficient.