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Word's on-the-fly spell checker watches over your shoulder as you type, politely pointing out spelling mistakes as you make them. The spell checker actually looks up every word you type in its dictionary to make sure you spelled it right. If you type something it can't find in its dictionary, the spell checker underlines the mistake with a wavy red line, as shown in Figure 1. (The misspelled word is also shown in the margin.)
Figure 1: Word usually knows before you do that you have misspelled a word.
Word doesn't beep, chime, or yell at you when you misspell a word. As a result, unless you watch the screen as you type, you may not immediately notice a spelling error. Periodically checking the screen is a good idea, even if you are a 90-word-per-minute touch typist who never looks up.
In Figure 1, the word Speler is marked as misspelled. When you see the telltale wavy red line, you have some options:
- Make the correction: You can use the Backspace key to delete the word, and then retype the word using the correct spelling. After you do that, Word removes the wavy red underline.
- Let Word help: You can click the word with the right mouse button to call up a menu that lists suggested spellings for the word. In most cases, Word can figure out what you meant to type and suggests the correct spelling. For example, when you right-click Speler, the following suggestions appear:
Speller
Spellers
Speer
Spiller
To replace the misspelled word with the correct spelling, just choose the correctly spelled word from the menu.
The quick menu that appears when you right-click a misspelled word also shows the following commands:
- Ignore All: Sometimes, you want to misspell a word on purpose. For example, you may just happen to be writing an article about how to use the spell checker, and you want to misspell the word Speler on purpose. In that case, you want to just ignore the misspelling. To do that, right click the word and choose Ignore All. Then, the word is ignored throughout the document.
- Add to Dictionary: In some cases, the underlined word is spelled correctly after all; it just happens Word's dictionary doesn't include it. Right click the word and choose Add to Dictionary to add the word to Word's spelling dictionary. That way, Word won't flag the word as misspelled in the future.
- AutoCorrect: This command reveals a menu that lists the correct spelling suggestions for the misspelled word. When you select one of the suggestions, Word creates an AutoCorrect entry that automatically corrects this spelling error from now on. Choose this option only for words that you frequently misspell that aren't already in the AutoCorrect list. To manually create an AutoCorrect entry, go to Tools --> AutoCorrect, and type the misspelled word in the Replace text box. Type the correctly spelled version of the word in the With text box, and then click OK.
 | If you accidentally use this feature, and then you want to remove the AutoCorrect entry it creates, don't rely on the Undo command: The Undo command undoes the correction, but it won't remove the AutoCorrect entry. To remove the AutoCorrect entry, choose Tools --> AutoCorrect, select the entry you want to remove from the list, and click Delete. |
- Language: This command lets you access the Language dialog box. You can use this dialog box to specify the language dictionary that is used to check your spelling. You can also use it to suspend spell checking for the entire paragraph. To do so, just select the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box.
The spell checker can't tell you when you use the wrong word but spell it correctly. For example, you may type dime navels when you mean dime novels. (Cheap literature may be a bad thing, but cheap citrus certainly is not.)
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