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Spell Checking is done by Emacs by calling external spell checkers.

Basic setup

You can use either aspell or hunspell.

Useful commands

M-x ispell-change-dictionary RET SPC: Check list of installed dictionaries.

M-x customize-variable RET ispell-dictionary: Configure default dictionary.

M-x add-file-local-variable RET ispell-dictionary RET TAB: Use this to change dictionary on per-file basis. This command will add this line to the file in question. Please save and re-load the file for new settings to take effect.

  -*- ispell-dictionary: "english" -*-

Common Customization

Hunspell

You need dictionary files for spell check to work. If you have installed OpenOffice or LibreOffice, then dictionary files are already there.

(setq-default ispell-program-name "hunspell")

Customization 2

(message "You can also do this customization")

GNU/Linux

GNU/Linux Notes 1

GNU/Linux Notes 2

Links to precompiled binaries are dead at time of writing.

I got RPMs from openSUSE, but hunspell.exe aborted after not finding a dll file. After that dll was added, another dll was not found. I gave up after several iterations. This was with mingw32-hunspell-1.3.2-1.98.noarch.rpm and later mingw32-hunspell-1.3.2-1.99.noarch.rpm (and associated lang and tools RPMs). Windows users be aware of this.

Project Pages

International Ispell: Official Home page and lots of dictionaries

International, Interactive Spell checker

Tutorial Pages

Spell checker problems: Xahlee's notes and tutorials

External Links

Emacswiki:InteractiveSpell

Spell check

Contents