One of the best features of Word is its spelling and grammar check. At your command, Word will go through your document and let you know if it finds any errors in spelling or in grammar. The most important thing to remember about spell check, however, is that it is far from perfect. It won’t notice if you’ve typed “their” instead of “there,” and some correct words it will pick up as misspelled (like the word “unchecking”). So, even after you’ve done a spell check, it’s a good idea to read your document over once or twice to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

 

To start a spelling and grammar check, use one of these commands:

-          Click the Spelling and Grammar button () on the standard toolbar.

-          Press the F7 key on your keyboard.

-          Click the Tools menu and click Spelling and Grammar.

 

When Word finds a spelling error, here is what you will see:

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top part of the window shows you the sentence it is currently checking. (The title at the top of the window tells you why it identified that word; in this case it says Not in Dictionary.) The word it thinks is misspelled is in a different colour in this window. You can type in this window to make changes to the sentence shown and click the Change button.

 

At the bottom of the screen, Word will tell you what it thinks the correct spelling of this word is.

 

Here’s an overview of what the buttons on the right hand side do:

 

Ignore Once	Ignore this particular word.
Ignore All	Ignore this word every time it appears in this document.
Add to dictionary	Add this word to the dictionary so it is never identified as incorrect again.
Change	Change this word to the word selected in the suggestions box or to what you have typed in the top window.
Change all	Change all instances of this word to the word selected in the suggestions box.
AutoCorrect	When typing, automatically correct this word to the word selected in the suggestion box.
Cancel	Cancels the spell check.

 

Once you have clicked one of those options, Word will continue checking your document for errors. You will have to go through this process for each word that is identified as misspelled.

 

Here’s the window you will see if Word picks up a grammar error:

 

 

The same concepts apply to this box. At the top part of the screen, Word will show you the sentence it thinks is grammatically incorrect, and will highlight the trouble part of the sentence. (You can type in this window to make changes to the sentence shown.) At the top of this window will be a brief explanation of what the trouble is; in the sample above it says Subject-Verb Agreement.

 

The bottom part of the grammar checking screen gives you suggestions on how to change the word or sentence. We also have buttons on the right hand side of the screen to choose how we want to treat this error:

 

Ignore Once	Ignore this error.
Ignore All	Ignore the rule that applies to this error.
Next Sentence	Skip this error without making any changes.
Explain	Clicking this button will open a new window explaining this grammar concept. You can see an example below.

 

 

 

You can also click the Undo button to undo your last change, or click the Close button to close spelling and grammar check. You can also uncheck the “Check grammar” box at the left of the screen to disable the grammar check.