Dyslexia Diary

When writing online I of course always have to double check my spelling and it’s the weakest part of my writing.  It’s not just the spelling which causes the problem but just simply spelling a word close enough to the correct version can also be difficult.

When I’m typing away on the keyboard, if I have a good idea on how to spell the word I will just write it and then rely on the built in spell checkers to correct any and all mistakes.  This will generally work and work well however it has some drawbacks.  For example the spell checker will not check on whether a word should be 1 or 2 words.

Talking to a friend this morning he suggested I add in a category called ‘workaround’ which of course makes sense as it’s how I basically function however, as soon as he said it I thought to myself “is that actually 1 word or 2″.  Apart from spelling normally these are some of the things I always have to consider when writing.

To show an example of how I struggle to spell and how I overcome this I’ve decided to pick a hard work to spell and this is my unedited version of the word:

temprature

Now of course I’m trying to spell  temperature and for this example the spell checker would pick up this error and correct it.  If however I didn’t get close to the spelling the spell checker will not actually give me the correct spelling which then leaves me with the problem of writing down the correct word.

If I get to the point where the spell checker is not giving me a suggestion which ‘looks’ right then I have to come up with another idea to get the correct word/spelling and this is where Google.co.uk comes to my aid.

As you may (or may not) know when you search for something in Google it will automatically correct your spelling, so for example if I wa to search for  temperature again this is what I get:

As you can see on the above image it will correct your spelling which at times does come in very useful.  You do have to be careful in doing this though as you have to remember the differences with US spelling and UK spelling and the fact we use multiple words which will sound the same, be spelt similar to each other but will have different meanings.

Google can also be useful if you don’t actually have any idea on how to spell the word, you just have to be inventive.

If I was struggling to spell temperature and my attempt was so poor that when running the spell check it didn’t give me a option, it would mean that the spelling was so bad the built in software within Word / WordPress is not going to help but alas Google can still be used.

To get the spelling from Google I would simply think about the word ‘temperature’ and what relates to it, so within Google I would simply start writing:

Weather Tem

When you start searching within Google it will offer it’s own suggestions on what you would like to search for, so in my case by typing ‘weather tem’ I get the following suggestions:

Google Spelling

As you can see the first option is the correct spelling of the word temperature so from this point I would simply select the search then copy / paste the correct spelling to my document.

Although not perfect this does allow me to write the way I want to regardless of how complicated the spelling might be.

The key to getting this to work though (if the spell checker will not give you the correct spelling / suggestion) is being able to use Google to search for your word without you having to type in the actual word.  There is always a search which will bring up a word without you having to type it in, you just have to think slightly outside the box.