Changing the language used for spellchecking

The spellchecking facility in Word is very useful, but unfortunately for those of us in Australia, most users leave it at its default of using US spellings instead of Australian.

When you receive an ms with the default settings, it makes it much more difficult to spot spelling errors and effectively wastes this powerful tool.

To solve this, try the following:

1. Open the ms in Word.
2. Select all the text by choosing Select All from the Edit menu, or Ctrl+A (Windows)/Cmd+A (Mac).
3. From the Tools menu, choose Language...
4. In the dialogue box, choose English (AUS) and OK. (If you have not already done so, now is a good time to choose Default... to make Australian English the default dictionary for any new documents that you create yourself.



5. You should find now that the words will now be checked against an Australian English dictionary (-ise, -our, etc.) instead of a US one.
6. Word underlines words that are not in its dictionary with a wavy red line. If you cannot see any, make sure you select Check spelling as you type in Preferences > Spelling and Grammar.
7. To add a new word to the dictionary, select the word, then right-click (or Ctrl-click for Macs) on it and choose Add from the contextual menu.

Of course, you wouldn't only rely on Word (or any other word processor for that matter) to do all your spellchecking for you, but it does mean that you're less likely to miss the really obvious misspellings!