Is it spellchecker or spell checker?

Have you ever typed spellchecker into a document and found it’s marked as an incorrect spelling. You’re then offered the suggestion spell checker as two words, which most people would then accept as the correct spelling.

In Australia spellchecker is a single word, and in America, it would be hyphenated. The problem is the word processing software we use doesn’t know about the word spellchecker and thus marks it as an error. When an error is found in a single word, the spellchecker will try various substitutions, with one being to insert a space. If by inserting a space two correct words are found, the spellchecker then returns the two words as a suggestion. In the case of spellchecker, the suggestion spell checker is wrong and causes people to create a spelling error in their document.

Spellcheckers are a great writing aid, but sometimes we need to keep in mind they aren’t perfect.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.