Spelling and Grammar Preferences

Spelling and Grammar preferences (Figure 24) control the way the spelling and grammar checkers work. There are two categories of options: Spelling and Grammar.

Figure 24. The default settings in the Spelling and Grammar pane of the Preferences dialog.

Spelling

Spelling options control the way the spelling checker works:

• Check spelling as you type turns on the automatic spelling check feature.

• Hide spelling errors in this document hides the red wavy lines that Word uses to identify possible spelling errors when the automatic spelling check feature is turned on. This option is only available with Check spelling as you type enabled.

• Always suggest corrections tells Word to automatically display a list of suggested replacements for a misspelled word during a manual spelling check.

• Suggest from main dictionary only tells Word to suggest replacement words from the main dictionarynot from your custom dictionaries.

• Ignore words in UPPERCASE tells Word not to check words in all uppercase characters, such as acronyms.

• Ignore words with numbers tells Word not to check words that include numbers, such as MariaL1.

• Ignore Internet and file addresses tells Word not to check words that appear to be URLs, e-mail addresses, or file pathnames.

• Use German post-reform rules tells Word to use German post-reform rules rather than traditional rules when the language is set to German.

• Custom dictionary enables you to create, edit, add, and remove custom dictionaries. Click the Dictionaries button to display the Custom Dictionaries dialog (Figure 25), which lists all the dictionary files open in Word. Then:

  Figure 25. The Custom Dictionaries dialog.

  

  
  

  • To activate a dictionary file so it can be used by the spelling checker, turn on the check box to the left of its name in the Custom dictionaries list.

  • To change the language of the selected dictionary file, choose a language from the Language pop-up menu.

  • To create a new custom dictionary, click the New button and use the dialog that appears to name and save the new dictionary file.

  • To edit the selected dictionary, click the Edit button to open it in Word. Then make changes and save it. Keep in mind that using this feature will turn off the automatic spelling check feature, so you'll have to turn it back on to use it again when you're done.

  • To add a dictionary to the Custom dictionaries list, click the Add button and use the dialog that appears to locate and open the dictionary file. This feature makes it possible to share dictionary files that contain company- or industry-specific terms with other Word users in your workplace.

  • To remove a dictionary from Word, select the dictionary and click the Remove button. This does not delete the dictionary file from disk.

  When you are finished making changes in the Custom Dictionaries dialog, click OK.

Grammar

Grammar options control the way the grammar checker works:

• Check grammar as you type turns on the automatic grammar check feature.

• Show grammatical errors in Notebook Layout view indicates possible grammar errors in Notebook Layout view. You may prefer to keep this option turned off if you often take notes with informal writing styles that could be flagged as errors.

• Hide grammatical errors in this document hides the green wavy lines that Word uses to identify possible grammar errors when the automatic grammar check feature is turned on. This option is only available when the Check grammar as you type option is enabled.

• Check grammar with spelling performs a grammar check as part of a manual spelling check.

• Show readability statistics displays readability statistics (Figure 26) for a document at the conclusion of a manual spelling and grammar check. This option is only available when the Check grammar with spelling option is enabled.

  Figure 26. Readability statistics for Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  

  
  

• Writing style enables you to select a set of rules for the grammar checker. Use the pop-up menu to select an option (Figure 27).

  Figure 27. Choose a writing style for your documents from this pop-up menu.

  

  
  

• Settings enables you to customize the rules for the grammar checker. Click this button to display the Grammar Settings dialog (Figure 28). Choose the set of rules that you want to modify from the Writing style drop-down list (Figure 27), then use the options in the dialog to set the style's rules. You can use the Reset All button to reset all writing style rule sets to the default settings.

  Figure 28. The Grammar Settings dialog enables you to fine-tune the way the grammar checker works.

  

  
  

• Recheck Document clears the list of ignored problems so you can recheck a document for errors.