Review: Spell Catcher 8

Review by Gary Coyne

Spell Catcher 8
by Casady & Green
From $39.95-$79.95 depending on whether you are getting an upgrade electronically or purchasing a physical product that will be sent to you.
http://www.spellcatcher.com/

I am a slopyp typist and dredful spellre.

Or, should I say a sloppy typist and a dreadful speller. I remember when I got my first Mac in 1985. My uncle was delighted I typed out my letters because my handwriting was so bad. But there was method in my madness: with soppy handwriting, one can disguise how bad his or her spelling is. For the most part, that technique to disguise my ignorance worked.

However, with the Mac, I now had to look up how to spell words--at least the ones that I knew I misspelled. Then along came Thunder 7. Thunder 7 would examine each word as it was typed and it would make a sound to let me know that it was unfamiliar with what was just written and could offer suggestions on how it should be spelled. Thunder 7 was a program that came out of the sky and saved me many many times.

Well, to make a long story short, Thunder 7 was purchased by Casady & Greene (the same folks who make Conflict Catcher) and it was renamed Spell Catcher. Now the latest version is known as "Spell Catcher 8," and a good program is even better. Written in native PPC code, it is now very fast. Also, Spell Catcher 8 is now an application, so there can be no extension conflicts. Spell Catcher 8 still adds an icon in the menu bar for you to select commands. Alternatively, one can also type in (user definable) command keys.

The standard question could be "I've already got a spell checker in each of my programs, why do I need yet one more?" Well, if all Spell Catcher did was to let you know that you misspelled a word, you'd be right. But now, Spell Catcher 8's suggestions for spelling are remarkably correct. A second major difference is that with previous incarnations of this program, if you misspelled two words in a row and then asked for help, it would only help you with the last word misspelled. The previous word was forgotten. Now, you can keep typing on and on and when you are done getting your idea on paper, you can go back and fix all your words that were typed. If you want, you can also tell it to ignore a word (such as a surname) and it will not ask you again to fix that word during that session. You can also make active several paragraphs, or a whole piece of text, and Spell Catcher 8 can spell check that block of text.

If you have writer's block on a specific word, there is also a build-in thesaurus and dictionary and a new feature utilizing the Macs speaking ability and have the word spoken.

As mentioned, you can tell Spell Catcher 8 to ignore words, but you can also teach it new words. Perhaps the best part here is that you are not limited to how it was entered. That is, if you typed the word "Borosilicates" (a type of glass that Pyrex is one of) in most dictionary programs, you can add that word to its dictionary but you could only add it as "Borosilicates," yet the root word is "borosilicate." Spell Catcher 8 lets you add it the correct way and provides every possible suffix for you to have Spell Catcher 8 check for (e.g., borosilicate(s).

Spell Catcher 8 is also a glossary program. In this review, when I type "sc," Spell Catcher 8 turns that into the full "Spell Catcher 8" by simply hitting the space bar or the return key. This can also be for words you commonly misspell or mis-type like "teh" or "comon" are immediately fixed into "the" and "common" as I type. You can add your own words to the many mis-typed or misspelled words already provided by Casady & Green. The interface for adding words to either the dictionary or the glossary has been improved tremendously in this new version.

Spell Catcher 8 not only saves you while you're typing, but it also can save you while you are not saving. Spell Catcher 8, as in previous versions, also includes "Ghostwriter" that saves every keystroke you type. So, if there is an accidental power outage or a computer freeze, you can go into the Ghostwriter folder and saved in SimpleText (or any other program of your choice) is every keystroke in that document typed on that day. After a user defined number of days, the ghostwriter materials are trashed from the computer. While it doesn't know where the cursor was, it does copy every word typed and salvaging lost material from this is much easier than trying to do it from memory.

Spell Catcher 8 can also help you alter what you have. By making some text active, you can select (from the Spell Catcher 8 icon in the menu) "Modify," and be presented with a wide array of choices.

These options can be combined in sets to make macros. So, for example, after you copy some text out of an email message and paste it into your word processor, you can initiate one of your own macros to: remove the bad paragraph marks (Form Paragraphs), add curly quotes (Smarten Quotes), remove all the "=" signs that appear in some email messages (Strip Characters), and add the ">" at the beginning of each line (Quote) so people know the text is from e-mail, but cleaned up so it can be read!

Lastly there is the issue of dictionaries. Not only is there the requisite US English dictionary and Thesaurus, but the user can also add Geology, Biology, Legal, Medical, Scientific and Technical terms; and if you do web site design, you can add HTML terms. In addition, there is a UK English spelling dictionary (and UK HTML dictionary), German and Old German dictionaries, Swiss German and Swiss German Old World Spelling dictionaries, and dictionaries for Spanish, French, Canadian French and Italian.

But back to all your other dictionaries. Do you need this program since you already have all the other ones? Well, that is up to you. I never used the dictionary in FileMaker Pro, Adobe GoLive, FrameMaker, Excel or Eudora. I sometimes use the one with Word, but most typically I use Spell Catcher 8 because it already has the specialized words that I use in my work. I only have to teach Spell Catcher 8's dictionary once instead of adding it to all the dictionaries in all those other programs.

Spell Catcher 8 cannot help you spell "from" when you meant to spell "form." Spell Catcher 8 cannot help your grammar, nor can it write for you. You will still need to proofread all your e-mail and letters and other text. It will however, check you when you write "frmo," when you type double words, when your punctuation is wrong: and when your capitalization is wrong. Spell Catcher 8 has undergone a major upgrade. It's as good as it used to be, but now it is much bettre. (Whoops, that's "better.")

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October 07, 2008