Oh, So That's How It Works!

HOW-TO: Check Spelling on Almost Any Web Page

David A. Gray, MBA
Chief Wizard, WizardWrx

Although most Web pages contain lots of text, not all are created using a word processing program. This may seem surprising if you consider that word processing was one of the first office tasks to which personal computers were applied. Although most Web page authoring tools come equipped with spelling checkers, not all are as capable as the ones commonly found in modern word processing programs such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect. Also, dynamic Web pages are sometimes generated from text stored in data bases, which may not be subjected to a thorough spelling check, and some pages are still created using programmers' editors, which usually contain, at best, only rudimentary spelling checkers.

Unless the text is embedded in graphics or Flash media, it can be easily put through the spelling checker built into your favorite word processor. Here is how to do it.

1. Navigate to the page using your Web browser.
2. Select all the text using either of the following methods.
   • Use the CTL-A key combination. You do this by holding down the CTRL key while you press the letter A. This highlights all the text.
   • Choose Select All from the Edit menu.
3. Copy the text into the Windows Clipboard using either of the following methods.
   • Use the CTL-C key combination. You do this by holding down the CTRL key while you press the letter C. This action copies the text into the Windows clipboard. The text remains highlighted.
   • Choose Copy from the Edit menu.
4. Open your word processing program or, if it is already open, create a new, blank document.
5. Paste the text you copied into the clipboard into the document using either of the following two methods.
   • Use the CTL-V key combination. You do this by holding down the CTRL key while you press the letter V. This action copies the text from the clipboard into the document. The text remains on the clipboard.
   • Choose Paste from the Edit menu.
6. Check spelling as you would on any other document.

If you have access to the source code of the page, you can use the results of your spelling check to correct the page yourself. Otherwise, you will need to contact the person who maintains the page and advise him or her of the errors that you found. The easiest way to do this is to save the corrected word processing document and attach it to a message.

The above technique was tested using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and Netscape Navigator 7.02, using Microsoft Word as the word processing program. It should work with other Web browsers and word processors. The proof is that I used this technique to check the spelling of this very page, which I built using WinEdit, my general purpose programmer's editor.