Spell-check your document

Enable the spell checker

The Spell-check feature is provided as a plugin in gedit which can be enabled as required. To enable the plugin:

  1. Select gedit ▸ Preferences ▸ Plugins.

  2. Select Spell Checker to enable the plugin.

Spell-check your document

To check for misspelt words in your document:

  1. Select Tools ▸ Check Spelling.

To have gedit automatically highlight misspelt words in your document as you type, select Tools ▸ Highlight Misspelled Words.

Using spell-check

You can choose the right substitution for misspelt words using the Check Spelling dialog. The misspelt word being checked by the spell-checker is displayed in bold style next to Misspelled word:. You can choose from the following corrective actions:

  • Change to: allows you to input a word and use Check Word to check the validity of the spelling.

  • Suggestions: lists the available substitutions for the word.

  • Ignore allows you to bypass spell check for a instance of current word.

  • Ignore All allows you to bypass spell check for all instances of the current word.

  • Change substitutes the misspelt or unrecognized word with a chosen substitute from the Suggestions: list.

  • Change all substitutes all misspelt or unrecognized words with the chosen substitute from the Suggestions: list.

  • Add word allows you to add the current word to the gedit User dictionary. Adding custom words to the User dictionary will allow gedit to recognize the word in documents and thus will not be highlighted as a misspelt word.

Define the language to use for spell checking

By default, gedit will use your current language to spell check your document. If you need to use another language, choose Tools ▸ Set Language…, then choose the language you want to use.

Dictionaries

gedit uses Enchant, a small system utility, for spell checking. Enchant can use several different dictionaries to check your spelling. Two such dictionary back-ends are Hunspell and Aspell.

If the language you want to use is not available in gedit, use your computer's software installer or package manager to install the dictionary back-end that you want.