spell -- Command

Find spelling errors
spell [-a][-b][file ...]

spell builds a set of unique  words from a document contained in each input
file, or the standard input if none.  It writes a list of words believed to
be misspelled onto the standard output.

spell should normally be invoked with the document in the form of the input
to the text formatter nroff  rather than the output.  spell deletes control
information to the formatter by invoking deroff.

The default dictionary is for  American spelling of English.  The -a option
specifies  this  dictionary  explicitly.   Under  the  -b  option,  British
spelling is checked.  This accepts favour, fibre, and travelled rather than
the  American spellings  favor,  fiber, and  traveled for  the same  words.
Words ending in  ize are also accepted when ending  in ise (e.g., digitize,
digitise).

The dictionary  has a reasonably complete coverage of  proper names as well
as  technical terms  in  certain fields.   However, it  covers some  fields
(e.g., computer science) better than others (e.g., medicine).

Looking up a Word

The COHERENT  command look  reads spell's  dictionaries to find  words that
resemble a fraction of a word that you type.  For example, the command

    look consider

returns the following to the standard output:

    consider#
    considerable
    considerably
    considerate
    considerately
    consideration#
    considered
    considering

The `#'  indicates a possible plural  form by adding `s' to  the end of the
word.  This lets  you check the spelling of a  word without having to enter
the word into a file and run spell on it.

Files

/usr/dict/clista -- Compressed American dictionary
/usr/dict/clistb -- Compressed British dictionary
/usr/dict/spellhist -- History file for dictionary maintainer
/usr/lib/spell

See Also

commands,
deroff,
look,
nroff,
sort,
typo

Notes

Dictionaries are not provided for languages other than English.

No dictionary can be complete.  You must add new words to the dictionary to
ensure that it fully meets your needs.

Obscure  words  (such as  opcodes,  variable names,  etc.)  are flagged  as
spelling errors.

Because the data  files required for spell are quite  large, they might not
be  installed onto  systems  with limited  disk  space.  As  a result,  the
command might not work as expected on all systems.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness