Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » In-site spellcheck?

Can we have a spell check for the site? I love roleplaying with people but sometimes their sentences are so misspelled that I have a hard time understanding what they are saying. So why can't we have an in-site spell check?

Everyone with a modern browser already has a spell-checker installed by default. When I typo in Chrome, I get red squiggly lines beneath a word that's misspelled. How is that different from having an in-site spellchecker?

We can't force correct spelling on anyone, especially since the site has people from many backgrounds and different languages. There'd be no way for the site to know what language it's checking automatically, whereas in your browser you can right-click and select a different language in less than a second. We expect everyone on the site to have some basic knowledge of English and make an effort, even if it's not perfect.

Perhaps you could extend your help to those who seem to be struggling? Sometimes all it takes is someone to message them and say "Hey, I noticed you sometimes have some trouble with your spelling. Is there anything I can do to help you?". You'd be surprised at how much of a difference you can make just by reaching out to people!

Browsers already have built-in spell checks. If they're already ignoring those suggestions (likely from just typing and posting too fast, without paying attention), they're likely to ignore anything built in to the site as well. If they're choosing wrong words, a spell check would serve no purpose. For some, the trouble is in whatever device they're accessing the internet with making it difficult enough that they really don't want to go back and correct anyway.

Yes. Running a program like this could be a bit heavy-weight as well, as we'd essentially have to make everyone who uses the site download a dictionary as part of the stuff that makes up a page here (in addition to the small stuff like the logo and the paper-texture background).

To optimize stuff for mobile so we wouldn't just toast people's data plans every time they looked at the site, we'd probably have to omit this feature for them... And they're also probably the majority of the people who don't already have access to an in-browser spell checker. So we'd be building a spell-checker for people who mostly already have one, but not getting it out to the people who don't. =/