Checking spelling in your artwork in Vectornation by Zaweba
Check spelling in Vectornation by Zaweba with Edit > Spelling > Check spelling, auto spell check, your own dictionary and the UK English Hunspell dictionary.
A spelling mistake on a printed banner or a box of labels is an expensive thing to notice after the job comes back. Vectornation by Zaweba checks spelling inside your artwork, so text on posters, menus and packaging can be checked before it goes anywhere. It uses the UK English Hunspell dictionary, which means British spellings such as colour and organise are treated as correct.
Running a spelling check
Edit > Spelling > Check spelling (Ctrl+I) goes through the text in your document and stops at each word it does not recognise. For each one you can choose a suggestion, leave the word as it is, or add it to your own dictionary.
Run a full check before every export or print, even if you have been careful. Text in a design is often typed quickly, copied from emails and edited many times, and errors creep in.
Auto spell check while you type
Auto spell check marks unknown words as you work, so you can catch mistakes when you make them rather than at the end. It is especially helpful when you are writing copy directly on the artboard, such as headings, captions and product details.
If you find the marks distracting while you are designing, you can still rely on the full check at the end. The two work well together: auto check for quick fixes, full check as a final sweep.
Your own dictionary
Every business has words the dictionary does not know: brand names, product codes, street names, people's names and trade terms. Adding them to your own dictionary stops the checker flagging them every time. Over a few jobs, your dictionary builds into a list of the words you use most, and checks get faster.
Be careful what you add. If you add a misspelling by mistake, the checker will happily accept it from then on. Add words only when you are sure of them.
Things a spell check cannot catch
A spelling checker finds words it does not recognise. It cannot tell you that you typed form when you meant from, or that a price is wrong, or that a phone number is missing a digit. For anything that will be printed in quantity, read the text through yourself as well, ideally at its real size and away from the screen if you can.
Text that has been turned into outlines is no longer text, so it cannot be checked. Run the spelling check before you create outlines, never after.
Spelling and other text tools
Spell checking fits with the other text tools in Vectornation. Find and replace helps you fix a misspelling that appears many times. Smart punctuation tidies quotes and dashes. Text placed from .txt, .rtf or Word files can be checked just like text typed on the artboard. Using them together gives you a quick routine for proofing: place or type the copy, fix punctuation, check spelling, then read it through.
A simple proofing habit
Make the spelling check the last step before you export, every time. It takes a moment, and it catches the kind of mistake that is invisible to the person who wrote it. Pair it with a final read through by someone else if the job is important, and you will rarely send out artwork with an error in it.
For a design app, having a proper UK English checker built in is a small thing that saves a lot of trouble, and in Vectornation it is always there, offline, with no account needed.
