US English gets everywhere

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Lance,

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.

Yes, I had a feeling. The setup there is quite misleading. That dialog
actually has nothing whatsoever to do with what language is being used to
spellcheck. That Dictionaries... Button *only* refers to the custom
dictionary, so the language only applies to words that are in the custom
dictionary. It has nothing to do with the general spellchecking.

I just didn't know that opening a Word doc with different language
preferences could affect my language preferences.

No, it can't. The key concept here is that language is not a preference you
can set once and forget about. Each word can carry a different language
setting--think of it more like a formatting command (font, bold, etc) than
as a preference like which toolbars show up. So opening a doc doesn't
change your preference because there is no preference to be changed--but an
imported doc can carry its own language formatting.

So you *can* control it--but you have to look in a different place (in Tools
| Language, or in style-based formatting).

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.

Beth gave you the fix--try reading #1 especially "Set the Default Language"
on this page and see if anything there helps:
http://word.mvps.org/mac/SpellCheck.html

Daiya

 

[Clive Huggan]

Or if you have to do this frequently, as I do, and want to do it more
quickly, see my previous post on this thread (change "UK" to "US" in the
macro).

Clive Huggan
============

 

[LT]

Thanks for the help, Beth & Daiya. I'll try those fixes.

Lance