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I rely on using the spellchecker when writing my posts.

I noticed that when I write in the title field the spell checker isn't available. In the body of the question the spellchecker does function correctly.
To prevent common spelling mistakes it would be preferred when the title was also spellchecked.

Is there something in how Stack Exchange have created the Ask Question page that prevent the spellchecking from working or is it a local setting that causes this discrepancy?

My browser is Firefox version 48, and I'm on Windows 7. I don't use plugins/add-ons for the spell-checking.

What are my options to also have the question title being spellchecked?

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  • 6
    We don't provide a spellchecker for bodies either - your browser does.
    – Oded StaffMod
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 9:27
  • 2
    As I know Firefox does spellchecking only for multiline edit boxes.
    – αλεχολυτ
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 10:11
  • @rene : i don't know that this check comes from the browser itself !, and if someone has this question , he could write it as a comment rather than just downvote the question without any clarification
    – Anyname Donotcare
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 12:57
  • @rene : firefox
    – Anyname Donotcare
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 12:59
  • @rene : it's version 48 windows 7 and i do't have any add-on or plugin to do that
    – Anyname Donotcare
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 13:03
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    This is kind of off topic here, as it's a Firefox issue, not really related to Stack Exchange. Any single line textbox won't have spellcheck in Firefox.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 14:02
  • 3
    @ShadowWizard Where the browser ends and the site begins is fuzzy enough that it's an understandable question. Many people using SE won't be technical enough to know which parts of in-page behaviour aren't SE's doing.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 18:57
  • 3
    @SevenSidedDie true, and that's why I did not vote to close as off topic or downvoted. Just explained the likely reason why others did downvote. Seeing others did vote to close, I'll vote to reopen if/when it's closed.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jan 11, 2017 at 19:58
  • On Super User: How do I enable Firefox check spelling on single line text-boxes forever?
    – Stephen Ostermiller
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 10:40
  • Even this is a browser feature, there may be something that SE could do to facilitate it. For example there may be an attribute on text inputs that instructs Firefox to spell check them.
    – Stephen Ostermiller
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 10:42

2 Answers 2

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Stack Exchange doesn't provide spell checking at all. It is your browser doing that, and it does work for question titles too on Chrome:

enter image description here

On Firefox though it can be an issue, although out of the control of the Stack Exchange developers. As one user commented:

As I know Firefox does spellchecking only for multiline edit boxes.

Which is the issue you experience. Firefox has a support document on how to enable its spell checking feature for single-line edit boxes like the question title: “How can I enable spell checking for a text box that is just one line, e.g. subject in e-mail?”

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Input elements in Firefox are not spell checked by default. Users can make it the default by changing layout.spellcheckDefault to 2 in about:config (reference).

Websites can enable spell check in single line input fields in Firefox using the spellcheck="true" attribute and value. Stack Exchange can (and should) add this attribute to the question title input. From:

<input id="title" name="title" type="text" maxlength="300" tabindex="100" placeholder="What&#39;s your bug, feature request, or meta-discussion topic? Be specific." class="ask-title-field js-ask-title" data-min-length="15" data-max-length="150">

to:

<input spellcheck="true" id="title" name="title" type="text" maxlength="300" tabindex="100" placeholder="What&#39;s your bug, feature request, or meta-discussion topic? Be specific." class="ask-title-field js-ask-title" data-min-length="15" data-max-length="150">

(reference)

Since the value is inherited in Firefox, it can be set in the <html> tag so that every text input on a page gets spell checked:

<html spellcheck="true">

However, this would probably not be desirable if there are text boxes for things like "user name" that would commonly have text not matching dictionary words.

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