This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Better integrated spell checker needed

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

This is more of a complaint than a question.

The integrated spell checker in Firefox really, really sucks. It things that "Robert's" is different than "Robert" AND you cannot add "Robert's" to the dictionary. It thinks "ROBERT" is different than "Robert."

GOOD spell checkers are case-insensitive when checking a word ("Robert" = "ROBERT" = "RObert" etc), they know what plurals and possessives are ("Robert's" is not a spelling error). I could go on.

The original "ABCspellcheck" (?) addon was a much, much better spell checker.

This is more of a complaint than a question. The integrated spell checker in Firefox really, really sucks. It things that "Robert's" is different than "Robert" AND you cannot add "Robert's" to the dictionary. It thinks "ROBERT" is different than "Robert." GOOD spell checkers are case-insensitive when checking a word ("Robert" = "ROBERT" = "RObert" etc), they know what plurals and possessives are ("Robert's" is not a spelling error). I could go on. The original "ABCspellcheck" (?) addon was a much, much better spell checker.

All Replies (5)

more options

I think what you are looking for is a grammar checker.

Go to the Mozilla Add-ons Web Page {web link} (There’s a lot of good stuff here) and search for what you want.

more options

Words that come in an installed spelling checker dictionary behave different from words that you add yourself to the persdict.dat file. A dictionary has metadata defined via the .aff file that allows some modifications like support for plurals.

Normally only the first letter can be a capitol or the entire word, but more than one capital letter at the start is usually flagged as you may have pressed Shift for too long.

more options

Note, using Firefox's built-in Spell Checker does not work properly because it's a hash spell checker. That's why it is case sensitive, does not recognize possessives, nor plurals, of existing words.

more options

Firefox uses Hunspell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunspell

Given current priorities I don't think Mozilla is likely to adopt a new spelling component in the near future, but maybe we'll get surprised. More likely, everyone should be trying to improve Hunspell since it used in many open source projects.

more options

See also hunspell4.pdf.

One of the major problems is that affixes aren't supported in the personal dictionary where you add your own words (an AFF file is only attached to an installed dictionary), so no modifications are supported and you would have to add all spelling variants to persdict.dat (plurals and leading capitals if the word can be the first on a line).