The spellchecker in Microsoft Word is a useful tool (even if it can’t replace proofreading). However, to make the most of this tool, you may need to check its settings first. In this post, for instance, we’re looking at three ways of customising the spellchecker in Microsoft Word:
The simplest way to customise the spellchecker in Microsoft Word is to change the proofing language. If you are writing for a British audience, you will want to use British English. This will make sure the spellchecker looks for UK spellings (e.g. ‘colour’ instead of the US English ‘color’).
To check and set the proofing language in Word, all you need to do is:
This will change the proofing language used for the selected text.
As well as changing the proofing language, you can add individual terms to the spellchecker dictionary. This is especially useful when Microsoft Word does not recognise a proper noun or a technical term, as the spellchecker will underline it in red even if it is spelled correctly.
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To stop these false positives, all you need to do is right click the highlighted term and select Add to Dictionary from the menu. The term is then added to the dictionary for all documents.
If you don’t want to make a permanent change, you can instead tell the spellchecker to ignore certain words. If you click Ignore while running a spellcheck, for instance, it will overlook a single use of that term. But you can also click Ignore All to stop the spellchecker from highlighting the term anywhere in the current document.
Finally, for complete control over the spellchecker, you can edit your dictionary. This ‘custom dictionary’ includes any terms that you have selected via the Add to Dictionary option mentioned above. But you can also add and remove terms from the dictionary by:
You can also import and create custom dictionaries here if required for particular documents.
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