Spellcast support & guide

Spellcast is a deterministic document checker designed catch issues that standard spellcheckers miss, it audits documents for typographic anomalies, style inconsistencies, missing definitions, and page formatting issues.

Key comparisons:

• Free alternative to Definely: Spellcast automatically extracts defined terms from your document on a scan, giving you an interactive glossary that lets you see definitions without losing your place in the text.
• Free alternative to Litera Check: Replaces heavy, expensive Windows COM-addin proofreading suites with a fast, modern web add-in that checks spacing, numbering, punctuation, references, and keep-with-next layout properties.

Microsoft Word add-in

Spellcast is available on the Microsoft AppSource store. It is fully compatible with Word on Windows, macOS, and Word on the web.

1. Open Microsoft Word, navigate to the ribbon menu, and select Home > Add-ins > Get Add-ins (or More Add-ins).
2. Search for Spellcast in the marketplace search bar.
3. Click Add to install. The Spellcast icon will appear on your Home ribbon tab, ready to open in the side pane.

Google Docs sidebar

Spellcast is live in the Google Workspace Marketplace as an editor add-on for Google Docs.

1. Open any Google Doc, select Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons (or click the marketplace link above).
2. Search for Spellcast in the Google Workspace Marketplace.
3. Click Install (or Admin Install for organizational deployment).
4. Once authorized, open Spellcast via Extensions > Spellcast document linter > Start to open the sidebar.

Spellcast makes it easy to keep track of definitions without constantly losing your place. When you run a scan, it automatically extracts your defined terms and displays them in a handy interactive glossary panel in the sidebar.

It can detect terms whether they are set out in definition tables or inline, and handles straight, single, and curly quotes seamlessly. It also scans definitions regardless of how they are formatted, ensuring terms are captured whether they are bolded, italicised, or unformatted.

Audits to keep your definitions consistent:

• Consistent styling: It warns you if definitions are styled inconsistently (for example, if some defined terms are bolded but others are not).
• Capitalisation checks: It alerts you if a defined term has been written in lowercase in the body of the document, which could lead to ambiguity.
• Unused definitions: It flags terms that you have defined but never actually used in the agreement.

Inconsistent formatting can make a professionally drafted agreement look sloppy. Spellcast keeps your document's presentation clean and uniform:

• Quotes consistency: It ensures you aren't mixing curly (smart) quotes (“...”) and straight quotes ("...") within the same document.
• Spaces after periods: It checks that you are using a consistent number of spaces after sentences (either single or double spaces throughout, rather than a mix).
• Dash standardisation: It cleans up hyphens surrounded by spaces and converts them into en-dashes ( – ), for the times when AutoCorrect doesn't pick it up.
• Colon capitalisation: It checks that you use consistent capitalisation for the text immediately following a colon.

Spellcast helps prevent embarrassing drafting errors before you send a document to a client or counterparty:

• Numeric concordance: It flags mismatches between spelled-out numbers and parenthetical figures (for example, if you write three (4)).
• Cross-references: It scans for broken pointers, empty references (like Clause 0), and static text that matches headings but isn't dynamically linked. In Microsoft Word, it also resolves native REF fields.
• Drafting placeholders: It highlights leftover placeholder brackets like [insert details], blank lines (____), or TK markers that need to be resolved before signing.
• Mismatched brackets: It finds unclosed brackets, parentheses and braces so you can fix them quickly.

Ensure your document is formatted correctly and flows logically when printed or converted to a PDF:

• Paragraph alignment: It flags paragraph text that does not match your chosen style (such as left-aligned vs justified), with the option to ignore text inside tables.
• Keep with next: It checks for heading lines, numbered clause intros, and sentences ending in colons that risk being separated from the paragraph or list that follows them by an awkward page break.

While Spellcast uses the same engine to identify issues in both word processors, the platforms expose different features to developers. This affects what changes Spellcast can automatically fix for you: