VimTrick: Spell checking in Vim
Spell checking with Vim is as simple as :set spell
I recently came across an embarrassing typo on my own website. Buried deep in a paragraph of HTML inside a Rails HAML template, there was a glaring spelling mistake. I quickly raced back to Vim and opened the template and spell checked the whole file. How? With :set spell.
Many novice Vim users are unaware that spell checking is built in and as easy as enabling with :set spell. As a veteran Vim user, I was aware of spell checking and how to turn it on, but I frequently forget the full complement of commands. So for anyone that needs reminding, here are the basics for getting the most out of Vim’s spell checker:
:set spell- Turn on spell checking:set nospell- Turn off spell checking]s- Jump to the next misspelled word[s- Jump to the previous misspelled wordz=- Bring up the suggested replacementszg- Add the word under the cursor to the dictionaryzw- Oops! Undo and remove the word from the dictionary
In the screencast below, I’ve demonstrated a few of these. With the file open, :set spell has already been enabled. I find the first misspelled word with ]s. It’s actually correctly spelled, it’s the name of my status page monitoring service, StatusGator. So I add the word to the dictionary with zg. Then I find the next misspelling with ]s and press z= to pull up the suggestion list. Finally, I press 2 to choose the replacement.
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