Write Confidently with Bad Spelling

(By Ofer Chermesh, Ghotit founder)

Every time I use a regular spell checker it hits me that the people who designed these spell checkers did not have in mind people like me, people who have really bad spelling.

When I use a regular spell checker I receive a word which is underlined in red and I am faced with one of the following problems:

  1. My intended word is not in the suggestions list. This is because my spelling was too far away from the correct spelling (meaning I spelled REALLY badly), and the spellchecker simply could not pick up on my intended word.
  2. My intended word is in the suggestions list, but since I am such a bad speller, I have no idea how to select the correct word from the list.

In addition, since regular spellcheckers don't pickup on misused words (words that are spelled correctly but are not the words I intended to write) I many times write really nonsensical sentences. I send these sentences out to the world without even knowing what nonsense I have just written. (For example, many times I have invited business colleagues for "Mating" instead of a "Meeting".)

The truth is that people with good spelling can not understand people with really bad spelling. They simply translate bad spelling to bad English in the good case, and "ignorance" in the worse case. I very soon lost my confidence in writing at all.

I tried all available spellchecking and writing assistance technologies, but none seemed to work for me. I started to fantasize and define the ideal spellchecker for me. Such a spellchecker included:

  • A spellchecker that can pick up on really bad spelling, and offer the correct suggestions
  • A context spellchecker, that can understand the context of what I am writing, so to avoid situations that I spell correctly but used a completely different word then the one I intended
  • A spellchecker that offers for each suggested word its meaning so that I can easily select the intended word
  • A spellchecker that can read out loud to me what I wrote, to make sure that what I wrote is really what I intended to write

Ghotit spellchecker was designed for people like me, people who have completely lost their confidence to write. With Ghotit, I now write confidently, continuing to misspell as I always have, but with the confidence that Ghotit is there with me to review my writing and offer the right corrections.