Massively spellcheck Markdown files with Linux and MacOS

Today I've learned how to spellcheck a batch of Markdown files with Aspell, a free software spell checker supporting more than 90 different languages*

This post was written for Debian and should work with any Linux flavour: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ArchLinux, etc.

MacOS should also be supported, I didn't test it though.

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 --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:

References

• Original post: Massively spellcheck Markdown files with Aspell on roneo.org
• Aspell's presentation on Wikipedia
• This post was inspired by vendelin.org

*Supported languages: Arabic, Breton, Esperanto, Kurdi, Quechua, Tamil, Swahili, Yiddish, Zulu, see the complete list