CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • January 28, 2017 at 11:44 am #91669
    Tyler Dickinson

    Member

    I have two questions about spelling and grammar checking in InDesign (and InCopy, where applicable).

    1) ID has a native spell checker, but no native grammar checker. (Why!?) Are there any good, robust (and affordable) grammar checking plugins out there? I’ve already encountered MindSteam (MindSpell, MindGrammar), but it’s ridiculously expensive ($20/month for the grammar checker and $15/month for the spell checker, but $25/month for the whole suite; that’s $300/year!!). While there ought to be a native grammar checker (a big reason why I don’t want to switch from Word to InCopy), I might consider paying $20/YEAR for a plugin.

    2) How well does the native spell checker work? What would be the motivation for getting a third-party spell checker? Picking on MindSteam as an example, why should I pay $5/month more for something which is already included in the program? When I tried to find a comparison online, I only found a long-outdated comparison between MindSpell and Proximity/HunSpell for a few (relatively obscure) non-English languages.

    Thanks for any help, support, and guidance you can offer!

  • January 28, 2017 at 3:05 pm #91671
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don’t know of any grammar checker plug-ins other than Mindsteam’s. In most cases, I recommend people write in a program such as Word rather than InDesign.

    The native spelling checker is pretty good, but I believe Mindsteam does other languages that InDesign might not?

  • January 28, 2017 at 3:46 pm #91674
    Tyler Dickinson

    Member

    Thanks for your quick reply, David!

    My follow-up question veers slightly off the thread topic, but I’ll venture it anyways. I’ve been using ID for a few years now, and I know Word very well. (I actually do…I’m not one of those who “thinks” he knows Word.) As a single user (i.e. not on a team; I’m the only one in the workflow), am I better off using just ID for ID projects and just Word for primarily text-based projects, whether it’s a small document like meeting minutes, or a large document like a thesis? Would using IC be essentially pointless?

    Thanks for your advice!

  • January 28, 2017 at 3:59 pm #91675
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don’t use InCopy for anything. I know I should like it, and use it — my business partner, Anne-Marie, is one of the top InCopy experts in the world! But I’m happy with Word. Even 90% of the articles in InDesign Magazine start out as Word files.

    Word is great for writing and editing text, but I would almost never use it to actually lay out a page! That’s what InDesign is for.

    See:
    https://creativepro.com/why-use-indesign-instead-of-ms-word.php

    If you need to link Word files to ID files, you might even consider WordsFlow:
    https://creativepro.com/import-word-documents-edit-in-word-and-indesign-and-keep-linked-for-updating.php

• Author
  Posts