Secrets of the word warrior

14/05/08 09:01 Filed in: Software

Rainmaker Software's SpellCatcher.

There are two software tools that I will not do without when it comes to writing. I've used both of them for years now, and they are among the few programs that are set to launch everytime my Mac boots up, a sure sign that I use them constantly.
SpellCatcher and Grammarian can both check your spelling in any text processing software that uses the Macintosh clipboard, but they have very different ways of assisting the process of writing.
Together, they cost around US$70 and are relatively tiny downloads in this very welcome era of pervasive broadband access.

SpellCatcher's predecessor, Thunder 7, was one of the first software products I ever bought, back in the days of System 6. Evan Gross, the author, has kept the product alive through two publishers and now sells it directly from his website.
SpellCatcher is a spelling checker, a database of proper spellings that runs through selected text and suggests corrections. Most word processors come with similar features, so why use SpellCatcher?

The advantage for me has been precisely that the software isn't tied to a specific program. You can check the spelling of anything that can be copied to the Macintosh clipboard and compare those words against a database of words that remains constant. Even better, if you create a user dictionary, a list of words specific to your own lexicon that I've found invaluable in a multicultural, language rich society like Trinidad and Tobago's.
My SpellCatcher user dictionary adds more than 5,000 very Trini words to the SpellCatcher database, which can switch easily between American and British style spellings as well as supporting a number of foreign languages.

You can look up words using references that include Webster’s Concise Electronic Dictionary, Merriam-Webster US English Thesaurus and the Franklin US English Thesaurus. Add in Apple's built in Oxford dictionary and writers on Mac OS X have little reason to use a word incorrectly.
If that was all SpellCatcher did, it would be useful, but overpriced. MacOS X now includes system wide spellchecking and ties the feature back to a powerful dictionary. But there are more features in SpellCatcher than you might ever use.

Ghostwriter allows you to save a raw text dump of everything you write to a backup file as you write. It's kind of like a manual Time Machine for writers. I once used the Ghostwriter feature extensively, but currently can't for reasons I'll explain in a bit.
SpellCatcher also rolls in a feature or two that you might have bought another bit of software to get, such as the ability to slap around text capitalisation, spacing and quotation marks and creating lists for automatic text expansion, which allows you to type a unique abbreviation like "mbu" and have it expand to your full business address.

You can create application specific settings that govern the way that SpellCatcher works in a particular writing tool that you use and turn it off in others,
For me, the most compelling reason to use SpellCatcher, despite the improvements that Apple has rolled into its operating system are the universal access to a central spelling resource, the ability to check spelling in another language without having to switch the language of the OS (I prefer the MacOS in US language mode but need to spell check in British language mode) and the continuous GhostWriter keystroke backup for referencing your writing, albeit in a messy melange of corrections layered in with errors.

I miss GhostWriter, but it's a liability of the way that both SpellCatcher and Grammarian work in OSX. Both applications work best when they use the Input Menu, the pulldown menu in OS X that you would normally use to change the language settings for the keyboard.
In a nutshell, Grammarian doesn't work particularly well if it doesn't have control of the Input Menu and SpellCatcher does, with the notable exception that GhostWriter doesn't work if it isn't the preferred application in the Input Menu.

The only way to use both products is to sacrifice the GhostWriter function, which is unfortunate, because when both products were offered by the now defunct publisher Casady and Greene, they worked well together.

Grammarian, by David Long, has also been around since OS9. It's a pure writing tool, first offering grammar checking and later adding spell checking to the mix.
It provides grammar checking, spelling, dictionary and thesaurus services to any application that can copy text to the clipboard.

The dictionary and thesaurus offer pretty spare results, and the spell checker is fair, if not as fully developed as the one offered in SpellCatcher. Grammarian shines at, well, grammar. It's kind of like your old English teacher, hovering over your shoulder checking your sentence constructions, tense agreements and dozens of other parameters that you can turn on and off to suit the weaknesses and strengths of your writing style.
Grammarian helpfully offers groupings that suit specific needs,
The publishing group of styles offers setups for the American Psychological Association and the rather more helpful Associated Press profile of style rules.
The Grammar Instruction group offers rules designed to match the needs of students at different levels of schooling.

Once you have a set of rules that works for you (and it would be nice to save them as a named set, Mr Long), using Grammarian is as simple as SpellCatcher. Select the text you want to check and choose the text action you require. A window pops up with the selected text, and you can begin reviewing the suggestions offered. Once you're through with your corrections, both products paste the words back where they came from.

I've used both of these products for years, tracing SpellCatcher back to its Thunder 7 days, for almost two decades and they are important enough to the way I work that I won't update my OS until I'm sure that they work with the new version.
They aren't for everyone, but if you could use some backup with your wordsmithing and a second virtual "eye" on your words before sending them out into the world, download a trial to see if they work for you.

Finder
SpellCatcher US$29.95
Grammarian US$39.95

Tags: Word processing