Many users become frustrated by Word’s proofing tools, especially the spelling checker. It doesn’t recognize words they know are right, or it insists on recognizing U.S. spellings when they want U.K. spellings, or they want Word to ignore certain kinds of text that aren’t really words at all. They become understandably exasperated with Word’s know-it-all attitude. Who’s in charge here, anyway? The question is, who is to be master,* and it is possible to get the upper hand!

How Word’s spelling checker works

Solving spell check problems

  Too little spell checking:

• Nothing is marked as misspelled.

• Word refuses to check spelling or skips some words.

• I told Word to ignore some words, but now I want to check them anyway.

• Word doesn’t mark a word as misspelled, but I’d like it to.

  Too much spell checking:

• Everything is marked as misspelled.

• Words are marked as misspelled even though they appear to be spelled correctly.

• I don’t want to see misspelled words, or I don’t want clients to see misspelled words.

• I want specific text not to be spell-checked.

  Problems with the custom dictionary:

• Word doesn’t recognize all forms of a word I added to the custom dictionary.

• I added a word to the custom dictionary by accident, and now I want to remove it.

• Word refuses to add a word to the custom dictionary.

How Word checks spelling

Let’s start with an explanation of how Word’s spelling checker works. It is not really very sophisticated. Essentially, Word has a very large (but not infinite) list of words to which it compares each “word” you type. If it doesn’t find a match, it tells you that the word is misspelled.

The lists used by the spelling checker are in “lexicons” (files with the .lex extension) identified by language. For example, Mssp3en.lex is the lexicon for most varieties of English; there is a separate lexicon for Australian English, Mssp3ena.lex. These files are in a proprietary format and cannot be read or edited by users.

The importance of language

The lexicon Word uses depends on what language you have selected for the text. By default, the English edition of Word comes with proofing tools (spelling and grammar checkers, a thesaurus, and a hyphenation file) for English, French, and Spanish (several flavors of each). Other languages are included in other editions. If you want to check spelling and grammar in a language not included with your edition, you must purchase the Office Proofing Tools package for your version of Office. For Office 2007, you can purchase proofing tools in individual languages.

Figure 1. The Language dialog

The language applied to text is selected in the Tools | Language | Set Language dialog (Review | Proofing | Set Language in Word 2007). In Figure 1, note that you can tell from the list in this dialog which languages have proofing tools installed. In this example, you could format your text as Estonian, but you would not be able to check spelling or grammar because the proofing tools for Estonian are not available.

If the language of your text doesn’t match the language of the proofing tools being used, then obviously you won’t get very good results. A common complaint of British users is that Word insists on using U.S. English instead of U.K. English, even though they have selected U.K. English as the default. There are two issues here:

1. No matter what language you think you have chosen as the default in Word, it may not “stick” unless you have selected the same language as the default in Windows (Control Panel | Regional Options | Input Locales or Control Panel | Regional and Language Options | Languages | Details...). For more on this, see “Set the desired language in Windows.”

2. Language is a character format that travels with text. If you have selected U.K. English as the language of your document and paste in text formatted as U.S. English, the language at the insertion point (after the pasted text) will be U.S. English, and that will be the language of any text you add at that point. One way to avoid this problem is to paste as unformatted text.

Custom dictionaries

In addition to the built-in “lexicon” in a given language, you can have any number of user-defined “dictionaries,” to which you can add words of your choice. The default user or custom dictionary is the Custom.dic file. When you right-click on a “misspelled” word and choose Add to Dictionary, this is the file to which it is added. It’s a simple text file that you can edit.

You can have as many custom dictionaries as you like. For example, you might have a number of specific technical terms that you use only for certain documents. You could create a separate dictionary for these terms and load it as needed. To create such a new dictionary (Word 2003):

1. Go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar (Office Button | Word Options | Proofing in Word 2007).

Figure 2. The Spelling & Grammar Options dialog

2. Click on Custom Dictionaries…

3. In the Custom Dictionaries dialog, click New…

Figure 3. The Custom Dictionaries dialog

4. In the Create Custom Dictionary dialog, choose a name for your dictionary and click Save.

Figure 4. The Create Custom Dictionary dialog

5. By default, your new dictionary will be checked in the Custom Dictionaries dialog, which means that the words in it will be added to those in your lexicon file and Custom.dic when Word compares a word you type to its lists.

6. If you want to be able to add words to your new custom dictionary as you work, select it in the Custom Dictionaries dialog and click Change Default. This will set your new dictionary as the default dictionary so that when you right-click on a “misspelled” word and choose Add to Dictionary, it will be added to this dictionary instead of Custom.dic. Don’t forget to reset Custom.dic as your default dictionary when you’re working in ordinary documents.

7. You can also add words to your new custom dictionary all at once. In the Custom Dictionaries dialog, select your custom dictionary and click Modify. In the ensuing dialog, type a word in the box at the top and click Add. Repeat as desired. The words will be added in alphabetical order.

Figure 5. A custom dictionary opened for modification

Some add-in dictionaries, such as dictionaries of medical and legal terms, are available for purchase. You can add such a dictionary by clicking Add in the Custom Dictionaries dialog, navigating to its location on your hard drive, selecting it, and clicking OK in the Add Custom Dictionary dialog. If you have created an exclusion dictionary, you can use this method to add it to the Custom Dictionaries list to make it more easily accessible for adding or removing entries.

Figure 6. The Add Custom Dictionary dialog

Too little spell checking

In recent versions of Word you have a number of options about how Word checks spelling. If you have “Check spelling as you type” checked in the Spelling & Grammar Options dialog (Office Button | Word Options | Proofing in Word 2007) (see Figure 2), Word will put a wavy red underline under words it doesn’t recognize. If you opt not to check spelling as you type, you can still run the spelling checker explicitly by pressing F7 or selecting Tools | Spelling and Grammar (Review | Proofing | Spelling & Grammar in Word 2007).

Nothing marked as misspelled

If no words are being marked as misspelled, even though you have "Check spelling as you type" enabled, it may be that you are an extremely good speller and not using any words that Word doesn't recognize. More likely, there is something wrong. Check the Spelling & Grammar Options (Office Button | Word Options | Proofing in Word 2007) to make sure that "Hide spelling errors in this document" is not checked (see Figure 2). If it is not, the usual problem is that the text has been formatted as “Do not check spelling or grammar” (see Figure 1). To correct this, select the entire document (Ctrl+A), apply the desired language to it, and clear the check box for “Do not check spelling and grammar” in the Tools | Language | Set Language dialog .

Misspelled words skipped

Sometimes, even though “Check spelling as you type” is enabled and some words are marked as misspelled, you will type or see a word that you know is misspelled, but Word does not mark it or find it when you run the spelling checker. The usual reason for this is that that portion of the text has been formatted as “Do not check spelling or grammar.” You may even get a message from the spelling checker that "The spelling and grammar check is complete. Text marked with 'Do not check spelling or grammar' was skipped." Remember that language is a character format that can affect even small selected portions of your text. Although most of your document may have the correct language applied, it's possible for certain portions of it to be formatted as "Do not check spelling or grammar." You can use this to your advantage, but when you do want it checked, select the problem text (or the entire document) and clear the check box for "Do not check spelling or grammar" in the Tools | Language | Set Language dialog (Review | Proofing | Set Language in Word 2007).

Rechecking ignored words

Occasionally you will right-click on a misspelled word and choose Ignore All, then later think better of it. Once you’ve told Word to ignore the word, though, how to you get it to see the word as misspelled again? Go to Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar (Office Button | Word Options | Proofing in Word 2007) and click Recheck Document. You will get the message box shown in Figure 7. Answer Yes and your ignored word will again be marked as misspelled.

Figure 7. Recheck Document message box

Marking correctly spelled words as misspelled

Sometimes you would like Word to call attention to a word that you frequently type when you intend to type a different, similar word. For example, suppose you often type “abut” when you mean “about.” “Abut” is an actual word, so it isn’t misspelled, but chances are that in most cases it’s a typo. You could add “abut > about” as an AutoCorrect entry, but there may be times when you would actually have a use for the word “abut,” so you don’t want to burn your bridges—just make sure that you have some warning that you may have used the wrong word. You can accomplish this by adding the word to an “exclusion dictionary.” This is also an effective way to deal with variant spellings that, while they may be generally accepted as correct, you prefer not to use.

Too much spell checking

Everything marked as misspelled

This should be an easy one to troubleshoot: clearly the language of the text doesn’t match the language of the proofing tools. If you’re typing in French and spell-checking in English, there may be a few words that will overlap, but for the most part you’ll have “misspellings.” Press Ctrl+A to select the entire document; then, in the Tools | Language | Set Language dialog (Review | Proofing | Set Language in Word 2007), select the correct language if proofing tools are available. If you don’t have proofing tools for the language installed, you can hide the spelling errors.

Correct words marked as misspelled

There are at least four possible reasons for a word to be marked as a misspelling even though you think (or know) it is spelled correctly:

• It’s not in the lexicon. If it’s not in the list Word compares words to, it will be marked as misspelled; if it’s a word you use frequently, you can add it to your custom dictionary.

• It’s formatted as the wrong language. If you type “civilisation” (a perfectly correct U.K. English spelling) but the language applied to the word is U.S. English, it will be marked as incorrect. Select the text and apply the correct language.

• The word has been placed in an exclusion dictionary.

• The word contains nonstandard characters. If the word is a contraction such as can’t or won’t, this is a likely possibility. Text imported from WordPerfect often uses characters from the WP Typographic Symbols font for apostrophes, quotation marks, dashes, and so on. If you don’t have the font installed, you’ll see inappropriate characters from your text font instead. If you do have the font installed, you’ll see what appears to be a correctly spelled word, but, because the apostrophe is a symbol Word doesn’t recognize, it doesn’t recognize the word. The error can be corrected by substituting an apostrophe from the text font. You’ll also have this problem if you use AutoCorrect to replace the combinations ff, fi, and fl with the “ligature” characters that appear in some fonts. These can improve the appearance of typeset pages but will cause Word to mark words as misspelled.

Hiding spelling errors

There are times when you don’t want to see spelling errors in your document, or you don’t want others to see them. There are several approaches to this problem, with varying effect on other documents and systems. The options can be summarized as follows:

• Option 1: Disable “Check spelling as you type.” If you clear the check box for “Check spelling as you type” on the Spelling & Grammar tab of the Tools | Options dialog (Office Button | Word Options | Proofing in Word 2007), spelling errors will not be marked in any document on your machine, but you will still be able to run the spelling checker explicitly (using F7 or Tools | Spelling and Grammar or Review | Proofing | Spelling & Grammar in Word 2007) whenever you want to. If you send the document to someone else who does have “Check spelling as you type” enabled, spelling errors will be marked on the recipient’s machine. This option is best when you don’t want to be distracted by the underlines or when your system does not run efficiently when “Check spelling as you type” is enabled.

• Option 2: Enable “Hide spelling errors in this document.” If you check the box for “Hide spelling errors in this document,” only the present document is affected, and spelling errors will be hidden on any machine on which it is opened, regardless of the Spelling & Grammar Options settings. You can still run the spelling checker explicitly to check spelling, but recipients will not see any words marked as misspelled. This is a good option when a document contains many proper names or technical terms because, even if you add a “misspelled” word to your custom dictionary, unless it is in the recipient’s custom dictionary as well, the word will be marked as misspelled on the recipient’s machine.

• Option 3: Format the text as “Do not check spelling or grammar.” If you select all the text, go to Tools | Language | Set Language (Review | Proofing | Set Language in Word 2007), and check the box for “Do not check spelling or grammar,” spelling errors will not be marked even if you have “Check spelling as you type” enabled, and you will not be able to check spelling by running the spelling checker explicitly. This setting affects only the present document, and it applies even on another machine. As explained in the next section, this option can be used selectively.

Exempting specific text from spell checking

Sometimes you will have a document in which certain kinds of text will always be “misspelled.” Even if you have exempted words in UPPERCASE, words with numbers, and Internet and file addresses (see Figure 2), there will still be text that the spelling checker will mark because it is in another language (for which you don’t have proofing tools) or because it is not a real language (programming code, for example, or equations that don’t contain numbers). This is an issue, for example, for an author writing a book about programming who must include code snippets. Or the issue may be just a lot of unusual names.

The solution to this problem is to format the text as “Do not check spelling or grammar.” Remember that we said that the language applied to text (and this includes the “(no proofing)” language) is a character format. It can be applied to a unit as small as a single letter, so it can certainly be applied to specific words or paragraphs.

The easiest way to apply this formatting is to apply a style that is formatted as “Do not check spelling or grammar.” If the text of this type will be complete paragraphs, this can be a paragraph style; if the text will be included in paragraphs of ordinary text, a character style can be used. To add the “Do not check spelling or grammar” property to a style, in the Modify Style dialog, click Format | Language and check the box for “Do not check spelling or grammar.” If you are creating a character style, it should be defined as “Default Paragraph Font + Do not check spelling or grammar” so that you can apply it to any style of text without changing the font formatting.

Figure 8. The Modify Style dialog box

Important Note: When you tell Word not to check the spelling or grammar of selected text, you exempt it from all the proofing tools, including the hyphenation file. If you have enabled automatic hyphenation in a document and want to prevent certain words from being hyphenated, you can do it by formatting them as “Do not check spelling or grammar.”

Problems with the custom dictionary

Failure to recognize variant forms

Word’s built-in proofing tools have the ability to recognize all tense forms of an included verb, plurals and possessives of nouns, and any combination of caps and lowercase. Custom dictionaries don’t have this ability. If you add a noun all in lowercase, Word will recognize it when capitalized, but if you capitalize it, it will not be recognized when lowercased. Nor will it be recognized if you make it plural or possessive; you must add all these variant forms individually.

Word added in error

To remove a word from a custom dictionary, open the Custom Dictionaries dialog, select the appropriate dictionary, and click Modify. Select the incorrect word, click Delete, then click OK.

Word not added

If you right-click on a “misspelled” word and choose Add to Dictionary and get the error message, “The custom dictionary is full. The word was not added,” this can indicate that the dictionary is corrupt or the spelling checker files are damaged; see this Microsoft Knowledge Base article. In no case does the message actually mean that the custom dictionary is full—at least not in recent versions of Word.

If, however, the Add to Dictionary command is unavailable (dimmed on the shortcut menu), this indicates that the language of the default dictionary differs from the language applied to the word you’re trying to add. By default, Custom.dic is set to All Languages; if you change it to, say, French, you will not be able to add an English word. This error might easily arise if you had created an additional custom dictionary for specific terms, set the language to something other than All Languages, set it as the default temporarily, and forgotten to reselect Custom.dic as the default.

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*Astute readers will recognize the allusion to this passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

This article copyright © 2007, 2008 by Suzanne S. Barnhill.