V7/usr/man/man1/spell.1

.TH SPELL 1 
.SH NAME
spell, spellin, spellout \- find spelling errors
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B spell
[ option ] ...
[ file ] ...
.PP
.B /usr/src/cmd/spell/spellin
[ list ]
.PP
.B /usr/src/cmd/spell/spellout
[
.B \-d
] list
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Spell
collects words from the named documents,
and looks them up in a spelling list.
Words that neither occur among nor are derivable
(by applying certain inflections,
prefixes or suffixes) from words in the spelling list
are printed on the standard output.
If no files are named,
words are collected from the standard input.
.PP
.I Spell
ignores most
.I troff,
.I tbl
and
.IR  eqn (1)
constructions.
.PP
Under the
.B \-v
option, all words not literally in the spelling list are printed,
and plausible derivations from spelling list words are indicated.
.PP
Under the 
.B \-b
option, British spelling is checked.
Besides preferring
.ft I
centre, colour, speciality, travelled,
.ft R
etc.,
this option insists upon
.I -ise
in words like
.I standardise,
Fowler and the OED to the contrary
notwithstanding.
.PP
Under the 
.B \-x
option, every plausible stem is printed with `=' for each word.
.PP
The spelling list is based on many sources,
and while more haphazard than an ordinary
dictionary, is also more effective in respect to
proper names and popular technical words.
Coverage of
the specialized vocabularies of biology,
medicine and chemistry is light.
.PP
Pertinent auxiliary files may be specified by
name arguments, indicated below with their
default settings.
Copies of all output
are accumulated in the history file.
The stop list filters out misspellings (e.g. thier=thy\-y+ier)
that would otherwise pass.
.PP
Two routines help maintain the hash lists used by
.I spell.
Both expect a list of words, one per line,
from the standard input.
.I Spellin
adds the words on the standard input to the
preexisting
.I list
and places a new list on the standard output.
If no 
.I list
is specified, the new list is created from scratch.
.I Spellout
looks up each word in the standard input and prints
on the standard output
those that are missing from (or present on, with
option
.BR \-d )
the hash list.
.SH FILES
D=/usr/dict/hlist[ab]: hashed spelling lists, American & British
.br
S=/usr/dict/hstop: hashed stop list
.br
H=/usr/dict/spellhist: history file
.br
/usr/lib/spell
.br
deroff(1), sort(1), tee(1), sed(1)
.SH BUGS
The spelling list's coverage is uneven;
new installations will probably wish to 
monitor the output for several months to gather
local additions.
.br
British spelling was done by an American.