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Many programs offer spell checking these days: performing magic behind the scenes to underline words as you type, showing neat little popup boxes with suggested alternatives, helping you correct your work with an intuitive, easy-to-use process. Well, forget all that because yWriter's spell checker is basic, clunky and still very much a work in progress. (I expect it to improve rapidly, which means these instructions could go out of date. I'll update them as frequently as possible.) I'll be honest, I've resisted adding a spell checker for two reasons: One, I can spell and two, I didn't know how to write spell checking code. I have now added a spell checker for two reasons: One, typos happen to the best of us and two, I learnt how to write spell checking code. Installing the word list. I don't include the dictionary file with yWriter because I have a policy of only distributing my own work. I do this for fun, and I don't want to get into licensing issues. The good news is that you only have to download the 12dicts file from Sourceforge. Once downloaded, extract the contents to the Dict folder in your yWriter program path. (The folder should already be present. If not, create it.) When you next start yWriter it will pause on the splash screen as it loads the dictionaries. Now the fun begins. To perform a spell check you have to be in the editor window. Click the 'Spelling' menu entry, then click 'Check Now'. All unrecognised words will be underlined and highlighted in red. Now you can alter them and click 'Check Now' again to see whether your guess was correct. (Told you it was basic! I will improve it, just let me get my novels into the publisher first.) If you click the 'Spell check on display and save' menu entry your text will be spell-checked when you display a different scene or when you click Save - which means you can use the 'Save' button as 'Save and Spell Check'. If you left-click on a word (set the cursor it in) then right-click the same word, you can add the word to a custom dictionary. If you start typing in the middle of a red, underlined word all your writing will appear red and underlined. Just click 'Spelling' then 'Clear' to remove all traces. (The editor won't save formatting, it's just a visual artifact.) I've only just added this code, so use with caution. I know of several bugs - for example, if you get an error on the word 'Pre' in 'Pre-release', every other occurrence of the word 'Pre' in the scene will be highlighted (even if it's part of another word - e.g. Pretender.) There's also a flickering effect when you spell check - all text is highlighted to clear formatting, then unhighlighted. Unpleasant but not fatal.