Online Dictionaries for Proofreaders and Editors
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To help make things easier for you, we have compiled a list of the best online dictionaries for proofreaders and editors.
You can use these for proofreading across different English dialects, but be sure you are using an appropriate dictionary for the dialect of the text. Refer back to them if you are ever in doubt of a word’s spelling, meaning, or use while proofreading a document. Even if you think you know what a word means, there can be additional definitions or subtle differences between dialects, so never hesitate to look it up!
Our go-to resource for UK English:
Our go-to resource for US English:
Other reliable sources for additional checks or cross-referencing:
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Collins Dictionary
- Australian English (subscription only): Macquarie Dictionary
For more online dictionaries, including discipline- or subject-specific ones, such as legal or scientific dictionaries, check out this blog post. And for proofreading Canadian English, check out our guide.
Another handy tool that you can use to investigate a word’s usage is Google’s Ngram Viewer. You can use this for:
- Checking which spelling is more common between two variants
- Seeing whether a variant spelling is still common in modern English
- Comparing the use of words and spellings in British and American English
- Checking whether a term is typically capitalised
Read our guide on how to use Google’s Ngram Viewer as a proofreading tool.
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