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Sick of bad spelling in your browser? So is Chrome

The latest update to Chrome offers a boon to grammarians everywhere: an improved homonym- and spell-checking function, right in your browser.

Seth Rosenblatt Former Senior Writer / News
Senior writer Seth Rosenblatt covered Google and security for CNET News, with occasional forays into tech and pop culture. Formerly a CNET Reviews senior editor for software, he has written about nearly every category of software and app available.
Seth Rosenblatt
Updated spell-checking in Chrome recognizes proper nouns. Google

When Chrome's engineers sat down to plan out feature updates, who would've thought that "spell-checker" would've been anywhere on that list?

Google Chrome 26 stable for Windows (download) and Linux (download) updates the browser's ability to automatically check for spelling and homonym mistakes with new dictionaries.

Chrome 26 for Mac (download) has received the other Chrome 26 updates, but the spell-checking feature will be made available later, Google said in a blog post. The company did not specify a timeline for the feature, and unfortunately, it will not correct inaccurate spelling already published elsewhere on the Web.

The spell-checking engine is developed enough to recognize popular proper nouns, such as band names, and it is now available in three additional languages: Korean, Tamil, and Albanian. Chrome fans on Windows now also get the ability to put profile-specific shortcuts on the desktop, for quicker access to customized versions of Chrome on shared computers.

Bug- and security-fixes in Chrome 26 contained 11 repairs, but none were marked as critical. The full Chrome changelog is here.