Aspell to check spelling

I never used a command line utility to check the spelling in my texts because I did not know how to do. After taking five minutes to learn how to do it, I feel guilty about not having used it before as it is really simple.

First, you want to install aspell package, which may be already there pulled as a dependency. In order to proceed on OpenBSD it’s easy:

# pkg_add aspell

I will only explain how to use it on text files. I think it is possible to have some integration with text editors but then, it would be more relevant to check out the editor documentation.

If I want to check the spelling in my file draft.txt it is as simple as:

$ aspell -l en_EN -c draft.txt

The parameter -l en_EN will depend of your locale, I have fr_FR.UTF-8 so aspell uses it by default if I don’t enforce another language. With this command, aspell will make an interactive display in the terminal

The output looks like this, with the word ful highlighted which I can not render in my article.

It's ful of mistakkes!
    
I dont know how to type corectly!
    
    
1) flu                                              6) FL
2) foul                                             7) fl
3) fuel                                             8) UL
4) full                                             9) fol
5) furl                                             0) fur
i) Ignore                                           I) Ignore all
r) Replace                                          R) Replace all
a) Add                                              l) Add Lower
b) Abort                                            x) Exit
    
?

I am asked how I want to resolve the issue with ful, as I wanted to write full, I will type 4 and aspell will replace the word ful with full. This will automatically jump to the next error found, mistakkes in my case:

It's full of mistakkes!
    
I dont know how to type corectly!
    
    
1) mistakes                                         6) misstates
2) mistake's                                        7) mistimes
3) mistake                                          8) mistypes
4) mistaken                                         9) stake's
5) stakes                                           0) Mintaka's
i) Ignore                                           I) Ignore all
r) Replace                                          R) Replace all
a) Add                                              l) Add Lower
b) Abort                                            x) Exit
    
?

and it will continue until there are no errors left, then the file is saved with the changes.

I will use aspell everyday from now.