Using the Spell-Checker

Thunderbird has a spell-check-as-you-type feature that is new in version 1.5. This feature can make spelling errors a thing of the past and eliminates the need to perform a separate spelling check. As with Microsoft Word, Thunderbird checks your spelling as you type and underlines (with a dotted red line) any words it cannot find in the dictionary (see Figure 10.8 for an example, where I misspelled the word one as wone).

Figure 10.8. The word not found is underlined in red, and a right-click gives you some suggested replacement words.

A simple right-click allows you to select possible correct spellings for the word in question. Thunderbird also lets you easily add words to your custom dictionary (that way, those special terms and names won't always be flagged as spelling errors).

Thunderbird supports languages other than English, so messages written in other languages can be checked.

Tip

Other language dictionaries can be downloaded from Mozilla's website. This site has almost 50 dictionaries covering about 35 languages.

Additional dictionaries can be found at http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/dictionaries.html.