Performing Spell Checking

Interestingly, the spelling check is one of the few Google Web Services tasks that you can't perform manually. To use this feature, you send a string (up to 2,048 characters long) to Google Web Services. The Web service checks the string for spelling errors and sends the corrected string back to you.

At first, you might wonder how you would use this service. After all, it's relatively easy to find a local spell checker that won't use one or more of the 1,000 calls that Google allots to each developer per day. The answer is that you wouldn't use this service personally in most cases. However, if you're running a Web site that requests text input from users, you can use the spell checker to validate their work.

Because the data you receive as input from the user contains fewer errors, you'll also end up doing less work. For example, any database you use to maintain the user input will have fewer errors, so you'll spend less time looking for errant records.