Do spellcheckers exist that are aware of Markdown?

Question

I would like to run a spellchecker over my articles before I publish them. I think aspell is ok, but it should not try to check code blocks:

asdfasdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsfasd f

```
a wild code block appeared!
thisHas quiteOften() some strings.that should NOT get changed
```

and also `inlined code` should not get checked

Do command line based spellcheckers exist for Linux that are aware of Markdown and hence ignore code blocks? I need to be able to run this in batch mode for multiple files.

(Bonus points if you know one that really understands LaTeX - no, aspell -t does not completely work)

Which editor? I use `flyspell-mode` with `ispell` in emacs and I've set it up to ignore LaTeX commands. Works fine. — terdon, Jan 15 '14 at 22:52
I use `vim` to do textile for posting to my blog and I believe that is aware of the markup, so they exist. — slm, Jan 15 '14 at 23:01

terdon · Answer 1 · 2014-01-15T23:54:40.533

6

I'm going for the bonus points. I use emacs and have flyspell-mode enabled by default for LaTeX documents. It works fine and ignores LaTeX commands.

The relevant lines in my .emacs file are:

;; load flyspell-mode for LaTeX files
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode) 

;; make flyspell mode ignore latex commands
(setq ispell-extra-args '("--dont-tex-check-comments"))

Haven't really used markdown much but I'd guess you can do the equivalent for it as well.

edited Jan 15 '14 at 23:54

answered Jan 15 '14 at 22:55

terdon

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emacs seems not to ignore HTML by default. The first spellcheck-errors I got were from `
`-tags.

Martin Thoma

Jan 16 '14 at 06:07

1

I've asked for a shell based spellchecker, because I would like to check about 400 markdown files. If the spellchecker does not find an error, it should simply quit (without opening a window). I think emacs is not Shell based, is it? – Martin Thoma Jan 16 '14 at 06:12

@moose I had not understood that you wanted a commandline utility that an run on multiple files. Emacs might well be able to do this (it does everything else after all) but I don't know how. The `flyspell` mode simply highlights errors as you type. – terdon Jan 16 '14 at 12:36

Thank you for the answer; I think it might be a very good choice for new documents (+1), but for by old documents it doesn't help. I'm sorry for not being clear about the commandline / batch part of the question. – Martin Thoma Jan 16 '14 at 15:57

> “Haven't really used markdown much but I'd guess you can do the equivalent for it as well.” ␤ Why'd you guess so? I don't really see the link between ispell having latex support and it purportedly also having markdown support. – rien333 Feb 14 '21 at 09:22

@rien333 as I say in the answer, I was going for the bonus points. If you read the question, you will see that the bonus points were offered for a spell checker that can deal with LaTeX. – terdon Feb 14 '21 at 13:11

My bad, didn't read carefully enough. – rien333 Feb 15 '21 at 16:14

@rien333 no worries, I know exactly how that feels :) I'll be deleting our comments soon. – terdon Feb 15 '21 at 16:16

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '19 at 08:03

Maybe markdown-spellcheck is the right tool for you. You need to install nodejs/npm.

Test run in interactive mode:

$ cat test.md 
asdfasdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsfasd f

```
a wildwild code block appppeared!
thisHas quiteOften() some strings.that should NOT get changed
```

and also `inLIned code` should not get checked
$ mdspell test.md 
Spelling - test.md
asdfasdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsf
?   Ignore
asdfasdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsfasd f
?   Ignore
asdfasdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsfasd f
?   Ignore
sdfa adsfa sdfa text to check adsfasd f
?   Ignore
>> 1 file is free from spelling errors

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 10 '22 at 09:08

The solution I use ignores code blocks. It's based on aspell and supports 90+ languages

Here is a short howto, you may want to check the original post for screenshots and better formatting

1. Install aspell

Here with the english dictionnary:

sudo apt install aspell aspell-en

A list of available dictionnaries can be found on gnu.org

2. Open a terminal

3. Navigate to the root of your project

4. Run the following command:

grep -rlP 'title:' content/ | xargs -o -n1 sh -c 'aspell check "$@" --master=en_US --lang=en_US  --sug-mode=slow -x --mode=markdown < /dev/tty' whatever

(You may want to adjust content/ and --master=en_US --lang=en_US)

5. Browse the suggestions and apply with a single keystroke

(Shortcuts and suggestions are shown at the bottom of the screen)

See this post for screenshots