Practical UNIX

Spell-Checking Documents

Emacs has a very useful interface called ispell: a spell-checker. If you don’t have ispell installed on your system, you can download it via FTP from this site:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/

Basically, Emacs offers three functions: ispell-word (bound to M+$), ispell-region, and ispell-buffer.

To start ispell, press M+x and type the name of one of the functions (you have seen this process before). Now Emacs will start spell-checking. If you spell-check only a single word and the word is correct, it will display miscellaneous is correct. If you spell-check a region or the whole buffer, Emacs will display Spell-checking done when it is finished with your buffer.

In case of spelling errors, Emacs highlights the word that it ...