Notepad and WordPad are the favourite editors of many Windows users. But one of the main issues associated with these ‘elite editors’ is the fact that they don’t support ‘spell-check’.

We may also use these editors if we want to edit some files (like html documents) quickly. If you are using a low-end (having low system configuration) user, then surely you need to use these editor for quickly editing files.

Absence of a spell check utility has troubled many users. This edition of techblog is about a spell-check utility that you can add to your Windows system so as to enable spell-check in Notepad and WordPad – tinySpell !

Obliviously launching a word processor just for the sake of checking the spelling of the words is not a good idea, as most of these software eat so much of RAM and processing power. In this case you can install a tiny piece of software called tinySpell which can assist you in this case. Just like a standard spell check utility, this tool will inform the user the moment he types a word incorrectly (i.e. on ‘key-up’). And this will be shown to the user and you can rectify the same by right click on the word (I added this as the hot key by meddling with the hex binary; you may use tinySpell icon for getting the options)  and selecting the correct spelling from the list of similar words that are in dictionary (just as do in a Word processor).

You can download the software from its website. You may note that there are two types of versions available in the website – tinySpell and tinySpell+. As you might have guessed, tinySpell  is a freeware program and tinySpell+ is an advanced level one offering more features. But I have found that tinySpell offers most of the features required by a normal user. Also, you can find that the developers have recently added a portable version of the software as well. The piece of software is found to be stable in Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista platforms.

Ways for checking the spelling

Well, if you are going for the free version of the software then you may note that there are two ways using which you can correct the misspelled words. If you misspell while typing, tinySpell  will make a beep sound and will change its ‘tinySpell icon’ from white   to yellow    . You can click on this icon for getting the correct spelling.

If you are copying a part of the text to the clipboard then tinySpell will check the spelling automatically and if it stumbles upon a misspelled word the icon colour will change.

In both the cases on you select the correct word from the list of words (from the dictionary) shown to you, the replacement occurs automatically.

Features

• It works with almost any Windows application (not just for Notepad and WordPad). So you can enable spell-check in all those applications.
• Alerts on key-up (if the word was misspelled)
• Checks the text that have copied to the clipboard
• You can add word to the dictionary
• You can enable or disable the beep sound
• You can configure which all applications should be allowed to use this utility
• Replaces the correct word by a single mouse click (as you do in a standard word processor)
• Light weight application (uses minimum system resources)

Apart from these it also shows spelling types and provides an easy access to online tools like Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopaedia etc. There is a search utility as well which you can use to search for words in the internet.

If you wish to have advanced level tools like translation services, then you have to go for the paid version. The paid version also handles issues like UPPERCASE words (ignoring such words), ignoring email addresses etc.

When checked for malware in the software, it found that the piece of software is free from ay form of adware or spyware.