US English gets everywhere

[Eoin22]

My default template is UK English. I write in UK English and a second
language using a Custom Dictionary. My second language is of course
unsupported!

Here's the problem - If I copy and paste (say from TextEdit, or
anywhere else) the pasted paragraph is importing a marker to change the
language designation to US English.

As I continue to write after the pasted section - Word treats the text
as US English. I am getting rather fed up of having to "select all" and
then change the language back to "UK English" after every copy and
paste.

Is there some way to get rid of this problem. If I delete the US
dictionary will that help?

Eòin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Deleting the US dictionary won't help--and actually, I think is not
possible, not sure there is a separate US dictionary.

What version of Word?

Is UK English part of the definition for the Normal Style? (Check via
Format | Style).

 

[Elliott Roper]

My default template is UK English. I write in UK English and a second
language using a Custom Dictionary. My second language is of course
unsupported!

Here's the problem - If I copy and paste (say from TextEdit, or
anywhere else) the pasted paragraph is importing a marker to change the
language designation to US English.

As I continue to write after the pasted section - Word treats the text
as US English. I am getting rather fed up of having to "select all" and
then change the language back to "UK English" after every copy and
paste.

I think you will find that the language of the style you are using is
set to US English.

You probably have a chain of based-ons, back to normal style, and that
may be set to US English.

Suppose you paste some text, and the current style is 'body text' say.

Select the pasted text and then go to format » style... in the main
menu bar. Have a look at the description. Does English (US) get a
mention?

OK, click on Modify.. in that new panel, look for Style based on:
If it says (no style), then choose language... from the selector in the
bottom left (it will be saying "format" to confuse you) Now your
familiar language window will appear. Change the language to English
(UK) and OK yourself out of there. Now everything you paste in that
style will be in English (UK)

The style's language wins over your last interactive change of
language, which is why it keeps coming back to bite you.

If there was a "based-on", then you will find it better to go back and
back to normal or whatever the first based on: (no style)
style is, and fix the language there. That should ripple down to all
the child styles once you change it there.

Note that this is a neato way to work in more than one language at
once. Make some sibling styles with different languages. Then you swap
style to swap language.

In passing, if you share a lot of Word work with others, it is a good
idea not to base your styles on normal. If automatically update styles
is on in preferences, pasting somebody else's text into yours might
wreck your normal into something like the other guy's normal style.

 

[Eoin22]

Sgrìobh Elliott Roper:

I think you will find that the language of the style you are using is
set to US English.

You probably have a chain of based-ons, back to normal style, and that
may be set to US English.

Suppose you paste some text, and the current style is 'body text' say.

Select the pasted text and then go to format » style... in the main
menu bar. Have a look at the description. Does English (US) get a
mention?

US English is only mentioned in the TOOLS / LANGUAGE menu.

In FORMAT / STYLE there is no mention of US English. In the description
I have "Font New York, 10 pt, English (UK), Left, Line spacing ..."
But it acts like US English. If I type a word like "colour" in the
middle of the pasted section it is flagged up as a spelling error.

I get the right language if when I paste I click the box at the end of
the paste "keep text only" - however that means I lose any word that
were in italics etc. If I click on "match destination formatting" I
keep the italics bits - but the language reverts to US.

Word just doesn't seem logical. - Eòin

 

[Eoin22]

Word version 2004 Mac(version 11.2)

Default language - English (UK)

Normal style description runs something like - "Font New York, 10 pt,
English (UK), Left, Line spacing ..."

Custom dictionary adds Gàidhlig na h-Alba ( = Scottish Gaelic / gd)

Eòin

 

[John McGhie]

Daiya:

You are correct: US English in Microsoft Office is "one" of the
columns in the main dictionary.

The main dictionary is a compiled binary database with a column for
each of the languages that are "supported" by the default
installation.

So you are right: you can't remove US English, along with Canadian
English and UK English and a few others, it's in the default
dictionary.

Cheers

Deleting the US dictionary won't help--and actually, I think is not
possible, not sure there is a separate US dictionary.

What version of Word?

Is UK English part of the definition for the Normal Style? (Check via
Format | Style).

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Clive Huggan]

Eòin,

I see you have New York as your default font. I recommend you change from
that; it dates from the very first dot-matrix ImageWriter printers, which
had very different metrics from today's printers. Your documents will look
much better (even if you have a problem with unwanted US English!).

In Word 2004 it's best to use Times New Roman (not Times), which is broadly
similar to New York has the advantage that it's nearly identical to the
Times New Roman font on the PC.

FWIW, my default is Times New Roman 11 point with a line spacing of "at
least" 13 point. I find it's easier on the eyes, especially in print, than
the more usual 12 point Times New Roman with single spacing. Depending on
which display I'm using at the time, I display the document at 125%, 130% or
150%.

But the more important thing is to change your default font from NY.

For more information on fonts in Word 2004, see pages 128 and 158 of some
notes on the way I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will",
which are available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html).

[Note: "Bend Word to your will" is designed to be used electronically and
most subjects are self-contained dictionary-style entries. If you decide to
read more widely than the item I've referred to, it's important to read the
front end of the document -- especially pages 3 and 5 -- so you can select
some Word settings that will allow you to use the document effectively.]

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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============================================================

 

[Eoin22]

You wrote

"Aha! I can reproduce your problem. Quit Word, Quit TextEdit. Go to
system preferences » International and place British English above
English. <CUT> I seem to have permanently borked TextEdit. Any rich
text from there
arrives in English US, no matter how much I restarted it."

OK - So it's not just my computer that does this. I now tried pasting
and copying quotes from my HYPERCARD Stack (Classic Application) - and
everything works perfectly. NO LANGUAGE CHANGE - Authors name in
italics preserved on "match destination formatting". So why the strange
behaviour pasting from OSX (4.3.9) - yet no problem coming from
Classic?

Eòin

 

[Michel Bintener]

Aha! I can reproduce your problem. Quit Word, Quit TextEdit. Go to
system preferences » International and place British English above
English.

Even after flipping that around, twice, since mine started in the right
order, I found that text copied from a re-started TextEdit and pasted
into Word was still turning up as English US, even though copied from
other applications appeared in English UK in Word.

I seem to have permanently borked TextEdit. Any rich text from there
arrives in English US, no matter how much I restarted it

Just a short "me too" message. I've noticed that behaviour a couple of
times, but I couldn't really identify the problem. The project I'm currently
working on involves copying and pasting text snippets I've stored in a Nisus
Writer Express file into Word, and since NWX uses the same text engine as
TextEdit, the same error occurs.
What I've found out is that if you paste some text from NWX (or TextEdit)
into Word using the Edit>Paste Special function (select "unformatted text"),
the paragraph will be in British English, and the same thing also happens if
you simply paste the text and use the formatting tag to tell Word to keep
the text only. As soon as there's any formatted text involved, however, the
language switches to US English, even if you tell Word to match the
destination formatting. That's fairly annoying, as my destination formatting
is in British English. And the worst thing of course is that you do not
necessarily see that language change if you don't pay attention; it's only
when Word starts underlining words like "behaviour" that you check your
language settings.

 

[Elliott Roper]

The answer would be "What does the source application place on the
clipboard?"

Before launchng into an argument, let me agree with your final statement
" It's mind-bendingly complex. "
because some of your assertions don't survive a few simple experiments.

The clipboard can contain any number of data types. The ones we're mostly
interested in are: Unicode (plain text), HTML, RTF, XML and Word Document.

Many source applications will put all four on the clipboard so that the
receiving application can make the choice that best suits it.

It appears that Word may not be making the best possible choice in this
best of all possible clipboards.

Unicode or Plain text cannot contain a language specification. The language
that results depends upon the destination application.

Word consistently chooses its current laguage setting for those. So far
so good.

HTML "can" have a language, but it's rare for it to do so. However, if the
source was a browser, HTML "may" have a language specified, and it's usually
English US if it is.

RTF almost always includes a specified language.

I *think* I can parse RTF. Examining such either by opening a TextEdit
RTF file in emacs or by pasting its entire contents into the same
editor shows no such command. Closest is a ql/natural which could
possibly mean to use the destination default. However Word, set to
English UK will mark the pasted text as English (US).

Pasting the exact same clipboard into InDesign CS2 sets the language to
English (UK)

That's one strike against Word. At the very least it made the wrong
choice of which clipboard variant to use.

In Word, the language specifier can be applied in units as small as a word,
a phrase, or a sentence.

One strike against InDesign. It chose English (UK) for a paragraph
pasted from Word, where one word was in English (US) The US word was
made English (UK)

In a Word document, the paragraph mark contains all of the formatting for
the preceding text up to the previous paragraph. That paragraph mark can
contain a language. A Word document also has a language set as its default.
Each style has a language specifier, which may be "Default" or it may be set
to a specific language. If the document has an attached template, that
template had a default language which was inherited when the document was
created. If the document did not have an attached template, its default
language was copied from the Normal template when the document was created.
When the Normal template is created, its default language is set to the
current language active on the system when Word was installed.

So to tame a language problem, you need to follow back along a very long
chain: Word will paste in the language of the closest specifying entity.
So: The previous word, sentence, style, paragraph, the document, the
template, the normal template.

I opened TextEdit RTF documents in Word. It got the language wrong.

If you ever blow up your normal template and have to delete it, Word creates
a new one. If your system is currently running with the OS operating in a
language Word has installed, the Normal template will be created with that
language as its default. If your system OS is set to a language Word does
not have installed, Word will fall back to the hard-coded default, which is
English US.

OK, so my new documents have English (UK). Why does a TextEdit
document, which pastes into InDesign as English (UK), paste into Word
as English (US)?

If I may offer you some evidence in your spat-ette with Beth -- It's a
bug -- especially using your user-centric definition of 'bug'.
<snip>
I slightly less fervently hope it is fixed in Word 12. I would much
rather there were a free bugfix in Word 2004.

 

[Ritika Pathak [MSFT]]

Hi Eòin,

Thanks for reporting this issue.

I can repro it on my machine and have forwarded it to the appropriate
tester. You will hear from them regarding this.

Thanks,
Ritika [MSFT]
MacWord Test,
Mac Business Unit, Microsoft


My default template is UK English. I write in UK English and a second
language using a Custom Dictionary. My second language is of course
unsupported!

Here's the problem - If I copy and paste (say from TextEdit, or
anywhere else) the pasted paragraph is importing a marker to change the
language designation to US English.

As I continue to write after the pasted section - Word treats the text
as US English. I am getting rather fed up of having to "select all" and
then change the language back to "UK English" after every copy and
paste.

Is there some way to get rid of this problem. If I delete the US
dictionary will that help?

Eòin

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Eòin,

I have been following this thread with interest. Thank you for starting it!

Now that we appear to be at a dead [for the present] end, I'll mention a
simple work-around that I apply whenever the wrong language appears; the
whole procedure takes 5 seconds from beginning to end:

1. Key Command-a to select the entire document.

2. Key a keyboard shortcut that applies English (UK).

3. Key Command-Option-z three times to return to where your insertion point
was (provided you actually did some typing there before step 1).

With regard to step 2, here's the macro that I apply via a keyboard
shortcut. My language is English (Australian), so I guess yours would
probably be "wdEnglishUK" in the macro.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sub ApplyEnglishAust()
'
' ApplyEnglishAust Macro
'
Selection.LanguageID = wdEnglishAUS

End Sub

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[Eoin22]

Many thanks to everyone for their contributions, and to all who
suggested solutions or rather work arounds. I will look at changing the
font in my template to a more modern one, and will look at the macro -
it will certainly make things quicker.

I didn't realise my question would raise as much interest. Let's hope
for a patch from MS.

Eòin

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Elliott:

It "should" be up the top, first couple of lines:
{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\uc1\deff0\stshfdbch0\stshfloch0\stshfhich0\stshfbi0\
deflang1033\deflangfe1033

Where "1033" is US English... English UK is 2057 and English AUS is 3081.

Because I, too, am a pedant, I prepared a three-line document:

)}}{\*\pnseclvl9\pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}\pard\plain
\ql \li0\ri0\widctlpar\aspalpha\aspnum\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0
\lang3081\langfe1033\cgrid\langnp3081\langfenp1033
{\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This is Default text
\par }{\lang2057\langfe1033\langnp2057\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This
text is in English UK
\par }{\lang1033\langfe1033\langnp1033\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This
text is in English
US}{\lang1033\langfe1033\langnp1033\insrsid2709949\charrsid12392337
\par }}

Notice how the Language Far East property keeps getting set to English US?
Hmmmm....

Cheers

The answer would be "What does the source application place on the
clipboard?"

Before launchng into an argument, let me agree with your final statement
" It's mind-bendingly complex. "
because some of your assertions don't survive a few simple experiments.

The clipboard can contain any number of data types. The ones we're mostly
interested in are: Unicode (plain text), HTML, RTF, XML and Word Document.

Many source applications will put all four on the clipboard so that the
receiving application can make the choice that best suits it.

It appears that Word may not be making the best possible choice in this
best of all possible clipboards.

Unicode or Plain text cannot contain a language specification. The language
that results depends upon the destination application.

Word consistently chooses its current laguage setting for those. So far
so good.

HTML "can" have a language, but it's rare for it to do so. However, if the
source was a browser, HTML "may" have a language specified, and it's usually
English US if it is.

RTF almost always includes a specified language.

I *think* I can parse RTF. Examining such either by opening a TextEdit
RTF file in emacs or by pasting its entire contents into the same
editor shows no such command. Closest is a ql/natural which could
possibly mean to use the destination default. However Word, set to
English UK will mark the pasted text as English (US).

Pasting the exact same clipboard into InDesign CS2 sets the language to
English (UK)

That's one strike against Word. At the very least it made the wrong
choice of which clipboard variant to use.

In Word, the language specifier can be applied in units as small as a word,
a phrase, or a sentence.

One strike against InDesign. It chose English (UK) for a paragraph
pasted from Word, where one word was in English (US) The US word was
made English (UK)

In a Word document, the paragraph mark contains all of the formatting for
the preceding text up to the previous paragraph. That paragraph mark can
contain a language. A Word document also has a language set as its default.
Each style has a language specifier, which may be "Default" or it may be set
to a specific language. If the document has an attached template, that
template had a default language which was inherited when the document was
created. If the document did not have an attached template, its default
language was copied from the Normal template when the document was created.
When the Normal template is created, its default language is set to the
current language active on the system when Word was installed.

So to tame a language problem, you need to follow back along a very long
chain: Word will paste in the language of the closest specifying entity.
So: The previous word, sentence, style, paragraph, the document, the
template, the normal template.

I opened TextEdit RTF documents in Word. It got the language wrong.

If you ever blow up your normal template and have to delete it, Word creates
a new one. If your system is currently running with the OS operating in a
language Word has installed, the Normal template will be created with that
language as its default. If your system OS is set to a language Word does
not have installed, Word will fall back to the hard-coded default, which is
English US.

OK, so my new documents have English (UK). Why does a TextEdit
document, which pastes into InDesign as English (UK), paste into Word
as English (US)?

If I may offer you some evidence in your spat-ette with Beth -- It's a
bug -- especially using your user-centric definition of 'bug'.
<snip>
I slightly less fervently hope it is fixed in Word 12. I would much
rather there were a free bugfix in Word 2004.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Sorry Elliott:

By "Hmmmm..." I meant "enquiring minds wish to know: why is it so??"

I would have thought that Language Far East ( langfe1033) should have been
"null" throughout. No Far East languages have ever been used in that test
document...

OK, "Down under" languages have, but that's NOT the same thing. We don't
use double-byte. Except in Toorak, where prices can be triple... Stop me
somebody...

Cheers

Hi Elliott:

It "should" be up the top, first couple of lines:
{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\uc1\deff0\stshfdbch0\stshfloch0\stshfhich0\stshfbi0\
deflang1033\deflangfe1033

Where "1033" is US English... English UK is 2057 and English AUS is 3081.

Because I, too, am a pedant, I prepared a three-line document:

)}}{\*\pnseclvl9\pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}\pard\plain
\ql \li0\ri0\widctlpar\aspalpha\aspnum\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0
\lang3081\langfe1033\cgrid\langnp3081\langfenp1033
{\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This is Default text
\par }{\lang2057\langfe1033\langnp2057\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This
text is in English UK
\par }{\lang1033\langfe1033\langnp1033\insrsid12392337\charrsid12392337 This
text is in English
US}{\lang1033\langfe1033\langnp1033\insrsid2709949\charrsid12392337
\par }}

Notice how the Language Far East property keeps getting set to English US?
Hmmmm....

Cheers

The answer would be "What does the source application place on the
clipboard?"

Before launchng into an argument, let me agree with your final statement
" It's mind-bendingly complex. "
because some of your assertions don't survive a few simple experiments.

The clipboard can contain any number of data types. The ones we're mostly
interested in are: Unicode (plain text), HTML, RTF, XML and Word Document.

Many source applications will put all four on the clipboard so that the
receiving application can make the choice that best suits it.

It appears that Word may not be making the best possible choice in this
best of all possible clipboards.

Unicode or Plain text cannot contain a language specification. The language
that results depends upon the destination application.

Word consistently chooses its current laguage setting for those. So far
so good.

HTML "can" have a language, but it's rare for it to do so. However, if the
source was a browser, HTML "may" have a language specified, and it's usually
English US if it is.

RTF almost always includes a specified language.

I *think* I can parse RTF. Examining such either by opening a TextEdit
RTF file in emacs or by pasting its entire contents into the same
editor shows no such command. Closest is a ql/natural which could
possibly mean to use the destination default. However Word, set to
English UK will mark the pasted text as English (US).

Pasting the exact same clipboard into InDesign CS2 sets the language to
English (UK)

That's one strike against Word. At the very least it made the wrong
choice of which clipboard variant to use.

In Word, the language specifier can be applied in units as small as a word,
a phrase, or a sentence.

One strike against InDesign. It chose English (UK) for a paragraph
pasted from Word, where one word was in English (US) The US word was
made English (UK)

In a Word document, the paragraph mark contains all of the formatting for
the preceding text up to the previous paragraph. That paragraph mark can
contain a language. A Word document also has a language set as its default.
Each style has a language specifier, which may be "Default" or it may be set
to a specific language. If the document has an attached template, that
template had a default language which was inherited when the document was
created. If the document did not have an attached template, its default
language was copied from the Normal template when the document was created.
When the Normal template is created, its default language is set to the
current language active on the system when Word was installed.

So to tame a language problem, you need to follow back along a very long
chain: Word will paste in the language of the closest specifying entity.
So: The previous word, sentence, style, paragraph, the document, the
template, the normal template.

I opened TextEdit RTF documents in Word. It got the language wrong.

If you ever blow up your normal template and have to delete it, Word creates
a new one. If your system is currently running with the OS operating in a
language Word has installed, the Normal template will be created with that
language as its default. If your system OS is set to a language Word does
not have installed, Word will fall back to the hard-coded default, which is
English US.

OK, so my new documents have English (UK). Why does a TextEdit
document, which pastes into InDesign as English (UK), paste into Word
as English (US)?

If I may offer you some evidence in your spat-ette with Beth -- It's a
bug -- especially using your user-centric definition of 'bug'.
<snip>
I slightly less fervently hope it is fixed in Word 12. I would much
rather there were a free bugfix in Word 2004.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Sorry Elliott:

By "Hmmmm..." I meant "enquiring minds wish to know: why is it so??"

I would have thought that Language Far East ( langfe1033) should have been
"null" throughout. No Far East languages have ever been used in that test
document...

OK, "Down under" languages have, but that's NOT the same thing. We don't
use double-byte. Except in Toorak, where prices can be triple... Stop me
somebody...

It "should" be up the top, first couple of lines:
{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\uc1\deff0\stshfdbch0\stshfloch0\stshfhich0\stshfbi0\
deflang1033\deflangfe1033

Where "1033" is US English... English UK is 2057 and English AUS is 3081.

<snip>

OK, there was no deflang at all in the test rtf I made from TextEdit.
You won't believe this, but when I read your first reply, I was already
thinking Postcodes. 3081 seems to be Heidelberg Heights.
Heidelberg Heights? Sheesh! Heights??? The place has gone to the dogs
since I left. I once lived in *Lower* Heidelberg Rd. They can call it
Heights all they like. In the old days, it would have been East Preston
or West Rosanna. It still ain't Trak.

Back on topic, it rather looks like TextEdit's RTF is not Microsoft's,
which is not right, since RTF *is* Microsoft's. Yet Word is not making
the best guess when it pastes or opens something without a deflang.

Sydney has Double Bite. It doesn't need Unicode, the Cosmo is still
there.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Elliott:

Don't tell ME about double bite in Sydney: I live opposite Westfield's HQ --
they REALLY know how to put the bite on...

The REAL answer to this represents a change of design thinking at Microsoft.
In Office 12, they're talking a LOT about how their research has at last
revealed that users feel Microsoft software is out of control when they use
it.

This state of affairs resulted from a very noble goal: to make software
"easy to use". They added all sorts of code to do things automatically.
But then they went the next step and took the controls away. So now, the
software IS out of the user's control.

The "Language" mechanism is a case in point. It's a property inherited from
multiple layers within the application. But it's really difficult to
discover this from the Help, and very difficult to discover what the
language is set to "here" in the text, and utterly impossible to discover
what the language "will be" if you paste.

The original idea was to allow text in British English to appear in American
documents without spelling errors being indicated Somehow the message
did not get through that in 99.9 per cent of cases, the user would want the
OPPOSITE If I am pasting text into my document, I NEED the American
spellings to be flagged as errors, because my customer wants Australian
spelling throughout.

So now we need some changes in the design:
We need to be able to set a default language for the entire application, for
all documents. Then an "Advanced" tab that enables us to specify whether to
allow multiple languages in a document (Default = False) and another that
enables the user to determine what happens when they open a document
containing languages other than their specified default: Allow, Reveal,
Reset. If they chose "Allow", Word would leave language settings alone in
an existing document when opened. If they hey chose "Reveal" Word would
apply coloured shading to text set to languages other than the default, and
if they chose "Reset" Word would remove all language specifications other
than the user's specified Default.

Maybe we'll get it...

Cheers

Sorry Elliott:

By "Hmmmm..." I meant "enquiring minds wish to know: why is it so??"

I would have thought that Language Far East ( langfe1033) should have been
"null" throughout. No Far East languages have ever been used in that test
document...

OK, "Down under" languages have, but that's NOT the same thing. We don't
use double-byte. Except in Toorak, where prices can be triple... Stop me
somebody...

It "should" be up the top, first couple of lines:
{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\uc1\deff0\stshfdbch0\stshfloch0\stshfhich0\stshfbi0\
deflang1033\deflangfe1033

Where "1033" is US English... English UK is 2057 and English AUS is 3081.

<snip>

OK, there was no deflang at all in the test rtf I made from TextEdit.
You won't believe this, but when I read your first reply, I was already
thinking Postcodes. 3081 seems to be Heidelberg Heights.
Heidelberg Heights? Sheesh! Heights??? The place has gone to the dogs
since I left. I once lived in *Lower* Heidelberg Rd. They can call it
Heights all they like. In the old days, it would have been East Preston
or West Rosanna. It still ain't Trak.

Back on topic, it rather looks like TextEdit's RTF is not Microsoft's,
which is not right, since RTF *is* Microsoft's. Yet Word is not making
the best guess when it pastes or opens something without a deflang.

Sydney has Double Bite. It doesn't need Unicode, the Cosmo is still
there.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[LT]

FYI, I'm having the same exact OPPOSITE problem. I often edit documents
that originate outside the U.S., but are being published for readers in
the U.S. This week, while writing copy on a new document, I noticed my
automatic spell check is red underlining certain words that are
completely correct: favorite vs. favourite; behavior vs. behaviour.

I automatically assumed my dictionary setting had been changed to UK,
but when I checked it, it showed it was still US English. I use the
Student/Teacher version of the Mac Office 2004.

Lance

 

[LT]

I went to Preferences, clicked Spelling and Grammar, and clicked the
Dictionaries button. In the window, it shows what language is being
used. Mine says "English (US)" but it's obviously set to UK somewhere
that I can't control.

I just didn't know that opening a Word doc with different language
preferences could affect my language preferences. Because I work as a
copy editor, this actually stresses me out beyond words. I'll keep
checking it to see if anything's changed.

Lance

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Lance,

If you want the document to be spell-checked as English (US), then you need
to do a Select All (Cmd>a) on the document, go up to the Tools menu, then
Language, and change the Language setting to English (US). That should do
what you want.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>