So, you have a WordPress blog and you want to make sure your blog posts are written in perfect English. Perhaps you are not a native English speaker? No problem! Instead of having your.com paper written for you by native English speakers, why not use a spellchecker?
There are plenty of these tools to choose from on the Internet. However, some are better than others. When it comes to a WordPress blog, four tools are usually mentioned: Grammarly, Jetpack, Ginger, and Hemingway. Even though there is no standard WordPress spellchecker, one can install a plugin for this. And most Web browsers, including Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, already have a built-in spellchecker. This is why you may think that WordPress has a standard spellchecker.
In fact, the browser is doing the spellchecking for you, not WordPress. Let’s take a look at the importance of a good spellchecker and then analyze the 4 most popular tools: Grammarly, Jetpack, Ginger, and Hemingway.
The Importance of a Good Spellchecker
Most people forget about the importance of a good spellchecker. The reality is that even people who maintain blogs with thousands of monthly readers forget about spell checkers. There are several benefits to using one of these tools. Obviously, a spellchecker will help you avoid typos and spelling or grammar errors in your content. Remember that people don’t like to see these mistakes when reading a blog post. In most cases, you will be considered an amateur if you can’t write properly in English or if you don’t proofread your copy.
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Another problem is that a typo can change the meaning of a very important phrase. Or, even worse, it could lower the SEO rating of your WordPress blog. Did you know that Google penalizes websites with poorly written content? It is not enough to be an authority in your field and to write valuable posts. The way you write your content is also very important. This is why using a simple tool like a spellchecker can help you avoid all these mistakes and can help you avoid getting penalized by search engines and readers alike.
A spellchecker will also stop all those comments about your writing style. People are prone to make fun of others when they notice grammar or spelling mistakes. And you will get a lot of heat for deleting comments, so this is not a good option either. Because you probably want to avoid these problems at all costs, you need to use a good spellchecker. It will catch most of the mistakes and will even offer you ways to fix them on the spot.
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Grammarly Spellchecker Benefits
Grammarly is a very fast and accurate spellchecker for your Web browser. It is installed as an extension in your browser, not as a plugin in WordPress. This means that Grammarly will check your spelling no matter where you write the text. The interface is brilliant and there is also a set of premium tools that will greatly improve your writing. And let’s not forget that Grammarly is the most popular browser spellchecker on the market today. According to its developers, the tools will give you “a better way to write.”
Grammarly allows you to add new words to its dictionary. In addition, the default word library is updated frequently to include modern words and phrases. The spell checker works all the time, so you don’t need to start the plugin or anything like that. Whenever a word (or an expression) seems strange for the plugin, it will underline it. If you right-click the underlined section, Grammarly will present you with a list of options to correct the error. While it is not 100% reliable, the list of suggestions contains the right choice most of the time.
Grammarly integrates with the WordPress input box pretty well. This means that it will check everything you write in the text input box in WordPress and present you with suggestions as soon as it detects an error. The only problem with this tool is that it can overwhelm you when you are writing a long post. The sheer number of underlined words and phrases can distract you from writing. To solve this issue, you can turn off the plugin from the menu bar of your browser and then reactivate it when you’ve finished typing. The plugin will check the entire text box and will underline all errors.
Jetpack Spellchecker Benefits
Jetpack is a spellchecker for WordPress. It is not like Grammarly, in other words. Jetpack must be installed as a plugin in WordPress and is used for a wide variety of purposes. However, did you know that it includes a very useful module called “Spelling and Grammar”? To use Jetpack as a spellchecker, all you have to do is activate the Spelling and Grammar module from the Jetpack Settings page. Your WordPress editor will instantly get an advanced spellchecking feature. The plugin is very customizable. You can choose the rules and issues the plugin should check your spelling and grammar against. And each user with admin privileges on your blog can set his or her own rules and issues.
Jetpack can even identify poor writing styles and can warn you about them. Yes, it takes a bit of time to choose the correct combination of rules and filters. However, once you set up the Grammar and Spelling module of Jetpack correctly, you will have an extraordinary spellchecker. Just a click on the spellchecker button at the top of the WordPress editor will run a complete scan of your text. All of the errors will be highlighted and the plugin will even show you recommendations to make your text better. If you click on the underlined words or phrases, you can see what’s wrong and a list of suggestions to fix the error.
While the Jetpack spellchecker may not be as advanced as Grammarly, it has a very big advantage over the former: it is 100% free. You can install the Jetpack plugin in WordPress without paying a dime. And it is also updated frequently. It works with the most recent version of WordPress, unlike most other spellchecker plugins out there.
Ginger Spellchecker Benefits
Ginger is a tool developed by Ginger Software, a company that has been doing some great work in language enhancement technology. In other words, they are using natural language processing techniques and some statistical algorithms to enhance your writing. This means that their tool should be very useful and quite advanced. And it is, except that it seems to work best on iOS devices. Even though there are versions for Android, Windows, and even Chrome and Safari web browsers, they all look like the iOS version. And the problem with the browser extensions is that they don’t seem to recognize all text input fields. For example, the WordPress editor is not recognized so the web browser extension doesn’t work in it.
This means it will not check your spelling and grammar in real time in WordPress. Instead, you need to open the tool in Windows and then paste the text you wrote in the editor to have it checked. You then need to copy the text from Ginger and paste it back into the WordPress editor. This is not the best way to spellcheck your copy, to be honest. And let’s not forget that formatting, and even hyperlinks, get lost when you copy the text from Ginger to WordPress.
Apart from these issues, Ginger is extremely effective as a spellchecker. It manages to find issues that most other spellcheckers didn’t find. Even though the process of checking your spelling and grammar with Ginger is more difficult than with other tools, the software does a very great job at finding all errors.
Hemingway Spellchecker Benefits
While Hemingway is a spellchecker, it is more focused on making your blog post more readable. This is why many bloggers use another spellchecker to check for problems with spelling and grammar and then use Hemingway to improve the readability of their posts. Basically, Hemingway will most often highlight entire phrases that it considers hard to read. It does not offer any suggestions, so it’s up to you what you do with that phrase. A nice feature is the color coding. The tool will use different colors, according to the seriousness of the problem.
The tool is available for Windows and Mac but does not integrate with your Web browser or with WordPress. In other words, you need to copy and paste your content between Hemingway and the WordPress editor to check the text.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, each one of the four spellcheckers has its pros and cons. However, we consider that Grammarly and Jetpack are the best. Grammarly is very easy to use, but Jetpack can be included in WordPress as a plugin. Grammarly comes with some useful tools, but they are not free – while Jetpack is free.
However, Grammarly is a web browser extension, so it will check the text anywhere, not just on WordPress. If you also use Hemingway after you spellcheck your text, you will make your blog posts more readable.
But did you know that you can use Grammarly, Jetpack, and Hemingway at the same time? Grammarly and Jetpack will make sure your spelling and grammar are perfect and that there are no typos. You then paste the text into Hemingway and see the phrases that are hard to read. After you make the changes, you simply paste the text back into the WordPress editor.
It’s not at all difficult, and the combination of these three tools is 10 times better than using the default Web browser spellchecker in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.