Do you have the reflex to check the spelling and the typography of your article before putting it online? If you are a champion of careless mistakes or if you simply have a few gaps in English, this article should interest you. Whether in a professional or personal context, it is very important to write correctly and without errors. Thanks to good spelling correction software, you will be able to track down the slightest mistake. Here is a selection of different programs that will help you enhance all your writing and thus publish impeccable content on the web. Free or paid software, find your new best friend!
Which free spelling correction software to choose?
The automatic correctors integrated into word processors are already a good starting point, but it is often very insufficient. To be absolutely certain of publishing faultless content on the net, you will no doubt need to use one of the free software programs suggested below. They will be of great help to you, you will not be able to do without them!
Scribes: a very complete free formula
The Scribes software is a great, free tool that allows you to make effective corrections. Its operation is highly appreciated by web editors. And for good reason, its interface is clean and pleasant. As for its handling, it is very simple: just copy your text and paste it into the dedicated area. A click on “verifies” and you’re done!
Faults are then highlighted in different colors and explained in a tooltip:
- red: spelling mistakes;
- green: grammatical errors;
- blue: typography and punctuation;
- Yellow: other errors to check.
Several very useful tabs are also available through an intuitive interface:
- a dictionary;
- a conjugator;
- a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms;
- a list of grammar rules.
The only limit: Scribes allows you to correct texts of up to 1000 words for free.
Good to know
The software offers an extension for 4 browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge. This plugin allows you to correct your texts directly on the web without copying and pasting into the Scribes editor. It also works on messaging services such as Outlook, Gmail, Orange and Yahoo Mail and on 90% of text areas on the Internet (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, forums, blogs, etc.).
To go further, you can opt for the Scribes Premium paid plan which costs €5.90/month (or €39.90/year). This option allows you to correct very long texts (approximately 35,000 words). The software will also offer you 150 series of exercises to improve your spelling and will detect certain defects in your writing (sentences that are too long, repetitions, pleonasms, etc.).
Finally, Scribes also offers a version for English! The software works the same way, it corrects all your texts in English, offers you a dictionary of synonyms, grammar rules and many extensions are available for free for your software.
BonPatron.com: a good free tool
BonPatron.com is a free spelling correction software that turns out to be very practical for quickly correcting short texts. Like Scribes, its use is simple, just copy your text and paste it into the BonPatron.com editor.
The online program will then tell you about the detected errors and advise you for the correction. If the spelling of a word is unknown to the software dictionary, it will suggest several words to replace it.
The interface is not very ergonomic, if not attractive at all! On the other hand, the content of the tabs is interesting:
- vocabulary: allows non-natives to learn French in 40 hours with exercises;
- grammar: many grammar rules explained and illustrated with examples.
Downside: only 300 words can be corrected at one time. It’s useful for correcting emails or social media posts, but otherwise it’s too fair.
Good to know
The paid version of this tool allows you to buy a large number of licenses. It is much cheaper than Scribes (€11.99/year with a free trial version for 5 days). The paid formula allows you to keep the history of your submitted texts and also to have a limit of corrected words. It also offers grammar exercises, an English-French dictionary and other features.
There is also an extension for Google Chrome but it has not been updated recently, so outdated.
The best spell checkers? The human and his brain!
It is obvious that no software, however powerful, will replace a human brain! Moreover, it is indeed men in flesh and blood who develop these programs. The info-source does not come from the machine!
So why not trust a human for your correction work? Whether you are a professional blogger, business manager, e-commerce site owner, you also have the option of calling on a ghost book writers who will take care of all the necessary alterations and improvements to your texts. This proofreading/correction work requires time and a lot of rigors, so entrust your writing to the pros and find the person you need in less than 5 minutes!
And to end on a high note, here is a video and some great examples of people for whom spelling correction software would be very useful!!!
Which paid spelling correction software to choose?
Choosing a paid tool means deciding to entrust your texts to a top-of-the-range program. Indeed, this software is developed by teams of experts, enthusiasts and specialists in the French language and offers you technical solutions and efficient writing assistance. The big difference compared to free spelling correction software is that they take into account the meaning of the sentence, the context. Be careful, these programs are formidable, but have a cost!
Antidote: “The cure for all your ‘words'”
If for some, spelling mistakes are poison for the eyes, Antidote will be the absolute remedy!
Antidote is probably one of the best paid spelling correction software on the market, if not THE best. Guide, dictionary, corrector, it is multi-faceted while remaining easy to handle and ergonomic. Moreover, it integrates directly with all your software:
- Microsoft Office avec Word, PowerPoint, Excel;
- Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox;
- OpenOffice, LibreOffice;
- Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail;
- Google Documents;
As an advanced corrector, it corrects a wide range of faults. From the forgotten accent to the difficult chord, he leaves nothing out! It is so powerful that it even detects homophones and other confusions of this style, anglicisms, pleonasms, repetitions, the use of colloquial vocabulary, awkward turns of phrase, etc. Guides are also available in the software: grammar, style, syntax, punctuation, rules and exceptions. Suffice to say that it is a very complete program. But count all the same 119 € for this little wonder.
Good to know
The English module is a product that is added to Antidote. It costs €59 and offers exactly the same rich and effective features as Antidote in French. Of course, it adapts to the specificities of the English language. The correctors and guides have been rewritten and redesigned so that the linguistic and typographical particularities are respected (because yes… English typography is different from French!). Antidote is therefore also a true bilingual dictionary!
Robert Corrector: an interesting choice
The Robert Corrector is a paid spelling correction software which proves to be powerful and has many qualities. It is PC and Mac compatible and offers a modern interface. As for its price, good news, it is a little lower than that of Antidote (99 €).
It integrates with your everyday software to enable rapid correction and save you time. And for good reason, the errors are explained to prevent you from repeating them!
In addition, this software turns out to be a very good companion for all your daily corrections thanks to its 8 reference dictionaries:
- definition of proper names;
- synonyms and antonyms;
- phrases;
- French and foreign quotes;
- proverbs;
- conjugated verbs.
If we had to compare it to Antidote, we would certainly rank it a little below. From a pedagogical point of view and to work on really in-depth texts, Le Robert Corrector is a little less effective.
Good to know
One of these highlights: it offers a free downloadable trial version for 30 days (for PC and Mac)!
