Last week, Brian Fuller, one of our Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup members, asked a question and posted a screenshot in our discussion group:
Anyone ever encountered this? I get the dialog box every time I publish or update a page or post. Thought I would ask before going through and disabling plugins one by one.
I’ve seen that dialog box, so I had a clue what might be happening. I replied to Brian,
Do you have Jetpack installed? With spelling and grammar enabled when a post is published?
Sure enough, that was the cause of the message. Much easier to diagnose than having him disable plugins one by one.
Jetpack Plugin and the Writing Module
With the Jetpack plugin, in the Composing section of the Writing Module, you can enable the Check your spelling, style, and grammar option and Jetpack will proofread your content before it’s published.
Which is a nice feature to have, unless somehow it’s enabled by default.
Or you’ve forgotten you’ve turned it on.
For Brian, what caused the “no writing errors were found” message to display was the option: automatically proofread content when a post is published.
He didn’t remember enabling the option, but quickly disabled it, tested it, and confirmed that it was causing the dialog box to display.
Brian commented that the notification message would have been easier to troubleshoot if it said something like, “Jetpack reports no spelling, style, or grammar problems.”
I agree, Brian. The message could be clearer for people who are trying to track down what is causing the message to display.
What You Need to Know
- Proofreading options in Jetpack are configurable by user, which is a helpful feature when you have multiple authors on your site
- Your Jetpack settings for writing are found in two places in the Dashboard: either visit Jetpack > Settings > Composing or visit Users > Your Profile
- Proofreading works in both Visual Editor and Text Editor, but there are a few differences. You can’t type in the Text Editor; the suggestion menu includes an Edit Selection option in the Text Editor.
- Any misused words or spelling errors are displayed in red. Grammar mistakes display in green while style suggestions display in blue.
- Select the error to display a menu with suggestions to correct the grammar, spelling, or style
- English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish languages are supported
- You can’t add words to the dictionary, but you can flag words to ignore
- The English Options also include proofreading for various rules, including bias language, clichés, complex phrases, diacritical marks, double negatives, hidden verbs, jargon, passive voice, phrases to avoid, and redundant phrases. (I’m assuming there are similar options for French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, but I don’t know)
I use Jetpack’s Proofreading on all my WordPress sites and I’ve come to rely on it for checking my spelling and grammar.
Having said that, I’ve had interesting results when I’ve set “words to ignore” in Jetpack Proofreading.
When I use the Jetpack > Settings option to make changes, and then view the changes from Users > Your Profile, I see different results in the “words to ignore.”
Not sure if it’s my setup; I’ve only seen in happen on this site, not on the other WordPress sites I manage.
Summary
While Jetpack’s Proofreading options are powerful, providing you with an extra check on your writing before your content is published, troubleshooting their notification message is challenging.
The message in the dialog box could be improved by adding “Jetpack found no writing errors” or something similar to make it clear what is generating the message.
