One of the annoying features of the system-wide spell check on Mac's is the fact you have to grab your mouse, right-click the word, and then click again to select the word. Macworld shows off how accomplish the same thing with just the keyboard.
The huge number of features it offers—check spelling, check grammar and punctuation, check paraphrasing, improve word choice, self-assess the use of target structures, and master English pronunciation—would probably convert to a few actual months enrollment time in a physical school equivalent.
This trick works on any program that uses Apple's built-in spell checking system, which means the likes of TextEdit or Mail. You have to enable to options for it to work. Under Edit > Spelling and Grammar, make sure Check Spelling While Typing and Correct Spelling Automatically are checked. When you misspell a word, hit the space bar, then the left arrow, and a menu will drop down with spelling suggestions you can navigate to with the arrow keys. It's a handy way to keep your hands on the keyboard and off the mouse while typing.
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It also goes well with our previously mentioned tip for hitting the Escape key when you're struggling with a word spelling. It doesn't work in every application, but it's worth trying in any program you use that relies on the built-in spell checker.
Press the Escape Key to Generate Spelling Suggestions in Mac OS X
When you're typing a word you don't know or remember how to spell, you can quickly get a…
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Correct spelling from the keyboard | Macworld
Alas, the free ones are nice but not good. Ginger is perky, but middle of the road in catching grammar mistakes (I include contextual misspellings, because spelling checkers do not catch them; there are uncountable numbers of them). Ginger does not catch style mistakes like wordy phrases, redundancy, clichés, platitudes, jargon, informality, overworked and trite expressions, affected language, pompous phrases, empty intensifiers, awkward usage, slang, nonstandard and nonidiomatic diction, rash overstatements, tautologies, vague terms, outmoded diction, and potentially offensive language.
Autocrit catches about as many grammar mistakes as Ginger does--about 12-14%--and about as many stylistic mistakes, as well. So depending on what you want, Autocrit can be up to twice as helpful as Ginger.
Language Tool is free and catches up to 25% of the grammar mistakes in our limited tests (published at Grammar Checker Comparison Tests, but only a few style problems,
Free Grammar Check Program
Editminion is free, but its website is full of bad writing, so I wouldn't bother with it.
Worth considering: Word and WordPerfect each catch around twice as many grammar mistakes as Ginger and Autocrit. Word also finds about as many style problems as Autocrit, but WordPerfect does not check style.
The expensive checkers don't do much better than the free ones. Several, (plus Word and WordPerfect) catch 25%-30% of grammar mistakes; only two (none of the above) catch more than 20% of the style blunders.
Best Grammar Check Program
So the best, free or not, catch fewer than a third of common grammar mistakes and seldom more than a fifth of the style problems. Use them, by all means, but don't expect them to clean up your writing very well.