.TH spell "" "" Command
.PC "Find spelling errors"
\fBspell [\-a][\-b][\fIfile ...\^\fB]\fR
.PP
.HS
.SH Options:
.IC \fB\-a\fR
Use American variant of the dictionary (default)
.IC \fB\-b\fR
Use British variant of the dictionary
.HE
.B spell
builds a set of unique words from a document contained in each input
.IR file ,
or the standard input if none.
It writes a list of words believed to be misspelled onto the standard output.
.PP
.B spell
should normally be invoked with the document in the
form of the input to the text formatter
.B nroff
rather than the output.
.B spell
deletes control information to the formatter by invoking
.BR deroff .
.PP
The default dictionary is for American spelling of English.
The
.B \-a
option specifies this dictionary explicitly.
Under the
.B \-b
option,
British spelling is checked.
This accepts
.IR favour ,
.IR fibre ,
and
.I travelled
rather than the American spellings
.IR favor ,
.IR fiber ,
and
.I traveled
for the same words.
Words ending in
.I ize
are also accepted when ending in
.I ise
(e.g.,
.IR digitize ,
.IR digitise ).
.PP
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).
.II "spelling, looking up a word"
.SH "Looking up a Word"
The \*(CO command
.B look
reads \fBspell\fR's dictionaries to find words that resemble a fraction of
a word that you type.
For example, the command
.DM
	look consider
.DE
.PP
returns the following to the standard output:
.DM
	consider#
	considerable
	considerably
	considerate
	considerately
	consideration#
	considered
	considering
.DE
.PP
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
.B spell
on it.
.SH Files
\fB/usr/dict/clista\fR \(em Compressed American dictionary
.br
\fB/usr/dict/clistb\fR \(em Compressed British dictionary
.br
\fB/usr/dict/spellhist\fR \(em History file for dictionary maintainer
.br
\fB/usr/lib/spell\fR
.SH "See Also"
.Xr "commands," commands
.Xr "deroff," deroff
.Xr "look," look
.Xr "nroff," nroff
.Xr "sort," sort
.Xr "typo" typo
.SH Notes
Dictionaries are not provided for languages other than English.
.PP
No dictionary can be complete.
You must add new words to the dictionary to ensure that it
fully meets your needs.
.PP
Obscure words (such as opcodes, variable names, etc.) are flagged
as spelling errors.
.PP
Because the data files required for
.B 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.
