After the Deadline Live for WP.com
Last week you guys published 1.4 million new blog posts, but you only ran the spell checker about 204 thousand times. Ahem. The two possible explanations for this are that we’re all perfect writers or that we just forget to run the spell checker. I’m in the latter camp.
I don’t blame you — spell checkers are usually pretty lame. They are bad with most proper nouns and usually my problem isn’t spelling (which my browser catches), but grammar and style.
It’s amazing to me how hard it is to edit one’s own writing. I can read something I’ve written ten times, even speak it out loud, and miss obvious errors and mistakes that an editor (often Jane) spots on their first pass. And what if Jane isn’t around?
Now there’s a solution for everybody. It’s already live on your blog, and it’s from a company called After the Deadline. Here’s a video to introduce you to it:
When I first tried After the Deadline I was blown away; it was so much better than other checkers I’d used, and it was by one guy building this thing that solves a problem other folks have teams of PhDs trying to solve. I reached out to Raphael (the one guy) to see how we could get this technology in front of WordPress users and ended up doing a deal for Automattic to buy his entire company.
The other cool thing about this new technology is that it’s getting better every day — Raphael is constantly adding new rules and heuristics, and the technology is learning from millions of blog posts on WP.com to make the contextual parts of the checker smarter and smarter.
At its core WordPress has always been about writing — that’s why we put so much effort into things like the visual editor, revisions, and auto-save, so you never lose your work. Now you have another arrow in your quiver to help you present the best possible face to your readers and the world.
As the video above shows, you can enable and customize the way After the Deadline analyzes your posts by adjusting the new Proofreading settings in your profile, and then use the new feature by clicking on the icon in the Visual Editor toolbar that has ABC and a green checkmark on it. After the Deadline will analyze your post as you write it and highlight potential errors with an underline (red for spelling, green for grammar, blue for style), similar to grammar and spell checkers in word processing software. Clicking on a highlighted word or phrase will reveal the suggested correction, tell you why it’s suspected to be an error, and allow you to accept or ignore it.
You can read more about the story behind Automattic acquiring After the Deadline on the official AtD blog.
This feature is English-only for now (give us a little time) and available for WordPress.org as a plugin.
- September 8, 2009
- Automattic, New Features, WordPress, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
Will this be included in future WordPress releases? Like perhaps a 2.8.5?
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You can get it today as a plugin.
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Exhibit #1: “Last week you guys published 1.4 million new blog posts, but you only ran the spell checker about 204 thousand times. Ahem. ”
Exhibit #2: “(…) the technology is learning from millions of blog posts on WP.com to make the contextual parts of the checker smarter and smarter”.
So, if no one focuses on fixing one’s mistake, and AtD learns from non-checked posts, wouldn’t that make it dumber and dumber? 😉
Sorry, I just had to point at this funny tidbit:)
Excellent find, Matt, and I look forward to seeing this implemented in other languages! Great great move, really!
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I give you a little time, but then I’ll need it for German language or let’s say the Austrian way using it 😉
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Yes! This is a big improvement over the old spell-checking system. What a pleasent surprise as I was finishing my latest post. This will make my blogging a heck of a lot easier. Good job WordPress.
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Good Addition.
I wonder why its called “After the Deadline”. Does it imply there’s still time to make that cricual change before the deadline? But in that case wouldn’t it be called “Before the Deadline”?
I’m confused 😐
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The name is a play on the After Deadline blog maintained by an editor at the New York Times. http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/after-deadline/ The purpose of the blog is to examine writing issues and mistakes they caught after the deadline. I thought the name was pretty fitting. Other candidates included prEDITOR or Ninja Edit.
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And what about Russian language?
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Someday!
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I never used spell checker as something automattically checked my words as I typed them, what is it?
Anyway, GREAT new littel thingy to play with Matt, thanks!
x
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Firefox does it for me.
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“A unique way of spelling a specific word.” Hilarious.
Funny thing: I accidentally stumbled upon these options a few minutes ago. The strange thing is, I haven’t been to that page on my profile for almost a year. What are the odds?
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Sweet! I’ll be an author of untold heights. Thanks!
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Hmmm – thanks for the tip!
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Great feature!
Nice improvement to WP users!.; )
PS.: The link to video in post is missing… ; ) – “Here’s a video to introduce you to it:”
Greetings from Brazil
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Awesome. Works great.
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it’s good to know that wordpress team really works hard. thanks!
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Sweet! Thanks for constantly improving this site. I’m a relatively new user, yet I’ve seen some fabulous changes in just a few short months. Color me impressed.
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I think this sounds and looks fantastic, I can hardly wait to use it.
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It sounds good! I must say, I usually cut ‘n’ paste my articles from Word into my blog and webpages and just use the spellchecker there first. Maybe this will save me time and Qi.
Thanks, WP!
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Fascinating. The example picked up two of my big pedantic issues. I absolutely HATE the use of UTILIZE instead of USE. But most people think it’s SO much better to use a multi-syllable word! the other one is SOMEONE THAT. Now, downunder we were taught that you always use WHO after people but THAT (or WHICH) after things. However, I believe that in the USA, THAT after people is perfectly ok. It grates on my delicate ears but I have checked USA grammar books and I believe it is OK. Or, did I read incorrect USA grammar books? Whatever, I will use this product in future.
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¡Genial! Otra forma de corregir las faltas cómodamente, me gusta.
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AWESOME!!
(How long has it been since I used that emote?)
I’m good at spelling and grammar, but every so often, I misspell words and make mistakes in grammar in my blog posts. The spell checker didn’t help much, but this new one will be terrific! All we need now is a spell checker for comments! 🙂
What will you guys think of next? Will WordPress give us the power to fly? 😆
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Congratulations both Automattic and After the Deadline!
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wowie wow wow wow. Absolutely amazing!
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I don’t need spell checkers, and people shouldn’t.
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Extremely interesting! I bet 9 out of 10 companies do not think on this aspect [just as only 204 people or instances of spell checking obtain in 1.4 million new blog posts]!
I am not surprised the comments here are rather long. I am as much excited because I love the English language!
And you bought the company itself!!! Birds of same feather always flock together! 😀
I saw a WP video for the first time, great quality and AtD has lot of features! Artificial intelligence, ahem! 🙂
I read their FAQ: The name ‘After the Deadline’ is inspired by the NY Times After Deadline blog!! Interesting!
I am addicted to ‘Windows Live Writer’ and will either submit drafts from it to the editor to use this service or simply or will check it at ‘polish my writing’!
Thanks. 😀
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When you say ‘English’, do you mean American English?
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After the Deadline supports both British English and American English.
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I’ve been using Firefox’s spell checker (partly because formatting is easier in Firefox than IE), but it has nothing for grammar. This is a welcome feature.
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“You can get it today as a plugin.”
Matt, thanks, I read that part 🙂
I am wondering if this functionality will be part of future WordPress releases, so I don’t have to download and install the plugin in all of my WP installations.
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Glad to hear it!
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Well, maybe if the existing spellchecker wasn’t so broken, more people would have used it… Between all the false positives and the tendency for it to randomly eat spaces in front of flagged words (often cvreating more errors than it fixes) I found it easier to just cut and paste into Word.
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“Over-used cliches” is redundant.
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A very useful and customizable feature – thanks 🙂
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Since I’m not seeing the “z” corrected in utilise, I’m assuming it is USA spelling? Didn’t see the option for no weird American spelling in the video.
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NICE!!! I can’t wait to turn my college students on to this when they start their blogs in a week or two!! Thanks–from me and them! (Now, will this be something we’ll ever be able to use with comments?? That’s where I need it!)
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this is very useful, indeed. thanks heaps, WP! ❤
but i guess it will take ages till we can have this feature in Vietnamese. 😥
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im not sure about this one.. yeah im all up for easy work. but i like the mistakes.
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awesome feature. i love it.
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I don’t like using mechanical editors too but this one works like human!
BEST I’ve ever used- and just a newbie ‘AfterTheDeadline’ on WP at that.
Just between us (isn’t it unethical to use this as my personal spell-check outside WP?) 🙂
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Hah not at all. I take the *greatest* joy in knowing something I made helps you in some way. Best of luck and enjoy After the Deadline. — Raphael (AtD developer)
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Wow, that’s a pretty short list of possibilities that you have there. … As for me, I run the spell checker I have in Firefox before I post my blog via ScribeFire. … And there are a lot more third party posting options than ScribeFire.
… Would that account for a couple hundred thousand postings without spellcheck? 🙂
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Good to hear this available as Plug in.. Just a question Matt? Is it possible to integrate “After the deadline” with Comments box by default?
Save Ecosystem.
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Not at the moment, but thanks for the suggestion!
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That’s great work but don’t you think it will ask for additional bandwidth and load time ?
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You’ll still be blogging strong with After the Deadline 🙂
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I would use it but it only seems to know English, at least I couldn’t find any setting to switch it to another language.
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Great tool. I’ve just gone back in to check a post I had already published and found a couple of errors that I have now corrected. Cool. Thank you. Much appreciated.
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Very good, I am waiting for german grammar and style ! 😉
Is it possible, too ?
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We’ll be working on other languages down the line.
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Wow! New stuff coming out all the time. A good tool to have.
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Great feature. Maybe it can even help you to stop using derogatory and prejudicial slang like “lame” in your own WordPress posts.
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This sounds really great. Wait, is that proper grammar? This will come in real handy for me because I really do stink at grammar. Great job WordPress!!
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This is awesome. So is WP, for finding and sharing it!
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Useful for me, as English user as second language.
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I never thought spell checking could be so easy. I always looked at it as a chore, but now I’m actually looking forward to it. Thanks WordPress!
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This is really cool. This will definitely help with my constant “its” and “it’s” problem. 🙂
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THIS IS AN AWESOME SITE. THANK YOU FOR THE FREE BLOG ACCOUNT AND A GREAT SPELL CHECK PROGRAM.
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“… or that we just forget to run the spell checker.”
Now that you’ve got this new and improved checker, why not turn it on by default?
If a blog owner finds it annoying, they can press the button to turn it off. It would be good if WordPress could then remember their decision for their next session.
Also, would be very good to see this applied to comment writing – comments are generally written more quickly and with less review than blog posts, it seem to me that they would benefit even more from AtD. Improving the written standard of comments would increase the amount of people adopting the habit of reading comments, increasing the average time spent on each WordPress.com post.
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I never even bothered to spell check… I wonder if I will? “_
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This is a great new feature! I love it! I for one, know that I don’t take a ton of time to check my spelling and grammar.
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This is a great feature thank you adding this helpful feature. Another great reason why WordPress Rocks.
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Yeah, but this would fully mess with the way i, like, express myself, dude. I’ve worked long and hard to develop my personal voice, and i don’t want no ROBOT turning my edgy, out-there posts into soulless automata that sound like a bunch of freakin’ job applications…
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The style checker options are from the Plain English http://www.plainlanguage.gov/ I understand that style checking isn’t useful to everyone (although it helps me a lot!) so these options are disabled by default. AtD only checks grammar, spelling, and misused words until you turn the other stuff on. We’re not out to stop you from expressing yourself–at all. Also if you find it keeps flagging stuff that is part of how you express yourself, we made it easy to select “Ignore Always” and you’ll never see that error again. So I like to think you get the best of both worlds.
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No it won’t fully mess with the way you, like, express yourself… It’s toggle-able ; ]
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This tool is not only useful in bloging but also helps people to know where they are going wrong in spelling as well as grammar (It doesn’t seem all issues are added). Thanks a lot. By the way how to use the plug-in in word editor? Sorry, asking questions is prohibited here but answer has already been given here which forced me to raise this follow-up question.
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I’m sorry, but plugins are not a feature of WordPress.com. That’s a feature of self-hosted blogs, available through WordPress.org.
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I do spell check but in word before I paste my post. But this will be an additional help. Thanks
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For now, all ihave to say is that i am very glad for joining this site
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I write in two languages on my blog. It would be nice if it was possible to switch between the grammar, depending on the language I use.
Also there are browsers which include dictionarys (but no grammar checks), so there was no need for me to press the spelling button.
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So it doesn’t suggest that you write “204 thousand times” as “204,000”? 😉
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Thanks so much!! Grammar is an incredibly important aspect of writing, and I need all the help I can get! Thanks! Another perk from Word Press!!
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Oh, thanks. Real live human editors and proofreaders don’t get no respect anymore.
EDITORS OF THE WORLD, UNTIE!
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Hehe… 🙂 I see AtD as a safety net meant to help catch some things. A computer will never replace a human editor but I want to have a computer assist with what it’s good at. It also helps for a good first pass over the information. I can’t see my own mistakes (repeated words and some homophone mistakes) when writing. AtD makes a sincere effort to help with these.
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AtD is great for that last-minute proofreading. Thanks to Raphael and WP for adding this really neat plugin!
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Of course, many of us compose offline in Word (or another word processor) and run our spellchecks there – and then paste the final product into WordPress.
— hippieprof
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Now you don’t have to. 🙂 You can do it right on WordPress.com.
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Hope it’s available for WP.com soon too!
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It is!
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Thanks so much for working diligently to give us the top of the line blogging tools and experiences!
Many blessings to you!
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I write my posts in a word processor first (NOT ‘Word’, as I’m English and therefore allergic to anything Bill Gates tells me my language should be) and speall check it, if necessary, within that. Thanks anyway.
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Pretty cool! Love it! =) Thanks!
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