Spelling and Grammar Check in Microsoft Word

What this handout is about

The spelling/grammar tool in Microsoft Word and other word processing programs, often referred to as "spell-check" or "the spell-checker," can be immensely helpful as you proofread a piece of writing. However, spell-check is not foolproof; using it incorrectly can even lead to errors in your paper that you never would have committed on your own. If you think of spell-check as a person looking over your shoulder as you write, you must learn to recognize when it is like a wise friend whose advice can be trusted, and when it is more like an irritating stranger who doesn't know what he's talking about: someone it's best to politely ignore. After explaining how spell-check works, this handout will outline the tool's advantages, limitations, and potential pitfalls.

We're going to begin with a discussion of the pros and cons of spell-check. If you are not familiar with using spell-check and need help setting it up or running it, skip down to "How to run spell-check".

Spell-check can be a lifesaver for...

Basic spelling mistakes. If spelling is not your strong suit, or you've already read the paper over 100 times, or you haven't slept in five days, it's there to give you a friendly reminder that it's "vacuum," not "vaccuum."
Typos and punctuation errors.
Simple grammar problems. Particularly if you've done a lot of revising, errors may have occurred as you've moved phrases around and cut/pasted sentences. (Reading out loud is another great way to catch such mistakes.) Spell-check is usually good at identifying problems with subject-verb agreement, a problem that arises when your subject is plural and your verb is singular, or vice versa. For example, if you wrote "Computers is useful for writing," spell-check would draw its telltale squiggly line under the sentence to let you know that you should change "is" to "are" (or change "computers" to "the computer").

Obviously, there's no reason why any of the above errors should stay in your paper when you have a handy electronic tool to help you fish them out! It is perfectly reasonable, and wise, to run spell-check on any piece of writing before you send it off. That applies to emails, too, since most email programs (and many web forms) now include a spell-check funcation.

Spell-check cannot necessarily be trusted when...

Your misspelling of one word happens to be the correct spelling of another word. Spell-check does not know what you meant to say! For example, it will happily allow you to turn in a paper with a big bold title referring to Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peas. Of course, not every instance of this kind of error will be so easy to spot. Some sound-alike words that readers often confuse include:
- there, their, and they're
- your and you're
- our and are
- then and than
- its and it's
- loose and lose
- have and of (as in "could have," which is sometimes incorrectly written as "could of")
Spell-check will not catch your mistake if you choose the wrong one of these words. Sometimes even reading aloud will not help you catch errors like these, because they will sound "right" to your ear. When you are unsure whether you have used the right word, use a dictionary to look it up.
You're writing in a specific context or for a specific audience, and therefore with specific rules. This is common in academic courses. For example, suppose you are writing a literature paper that contains a quote from a poem by a British author. The poem contains the word "colour." This is the correct spelling in British English, but your spell-check dictionary is probably set for American English. If so, it will tell you to change the spelling to "color"—according to the rules that spell-check knows, "colour" is wrong. But the rules in your literature class are different—your instructor will want you to quote the poem exactly as it appears in the anthology you are reading, keeping all the spellings the same as they are in the original text.
The errors involve capitalization or punctuation, rather than spelling. If you are writing about the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, you need to capitalize each of those words. However, since "little" and "rock" are both words in their own right, spell-check will let you get away with writing "little rock, Arkansas" or "little Rock, Arkansas." Your instructor will not!
You've written something that simply doesn't make any sense. You can tell spell-check that the dog bit into the kitchen, and it will just smile and nod. There is nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence, nor does it have any spelling errors. Spell-check means well, but it just doesn't know any better.

Spell-check should probably just mind its own business when it comes to...

Proper nouns, such as the names of people and places. If your instructor has an unusual name, for example, Spell-check will be nagging you from the moment you try to type it at the top of the page! After making sure that you have indeed spelled Guyoila Bherzheniev correctly, move on. The same goes for names of places, ethnic groups, foreign languages, etc.
Wordplay, or newly coined words that have not yet been added to spell-check's dictionary. Spell-check will think you're crazy for typing Juneteenth even though this is a well-known book by a respected author that is entirely plausible as a college-level reading assignment. (Examples like this one, by the way, sometimes reveal inadvertent biases in programs like spell-check. "Juneteenth" refers to June 19th, which is an official holiday in 25 states marking the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans in 1865.)
Academic jargon. We're talking about those words you've never heard or read outside of the context of your class, such as "othering" or "biopsychosocial." Your instructor may well expect you to know and use these words, and furthermore, to spell them correctly, but spell-check has no idea what you're talking about. It will automatically think you've made an error. And even if you have misspelled the word, spell-check won't have any suggestions. You're on your own, so be sure to take a careful look at these words before submitting your paper.
Most grammatical issues. It's worth taking a second look at sentences that spell-check marks, but you should not automatically accept its grammatical suggestions; doing so may lead you to include a bunch of nonsense in your paper. Spell-check does not understand the meaning of your sentences and can be confused by complex constructions.

Here's an example of how placing too much trust in spell-check can get you into trouble. Later in this handout, the following sentence appears:
It's there to help you use your writing and editing skills by giving you reminders and suggestions about spelling, mechanics, and so on.

Spell-check suggests that the word "your" be changed to "you're." Spell-check is probably thinking that "you're" is the right choice because it appears next to "writing"—"You're writing" would be a perfectly legitimate, grammatical sentence on its own. It's understandable that spell-check would have a tough time finding the verb in a sentence with so many -ing words (writing, editing, and spelling). Unfortunately, "you're" is not what we meant; we meant "your." Automatically accepting spell-check's suggestion would have left us with
It's there to help you use you're writing and editing skills by giving you reminders and suggestions about spelling, mechanics, and so on.

And that would be wrong.

Tips for making spell-check a helpful companion instead of a presumptuous intruder

It's usually most efficient to run spell-check as part of your final editing and "touching-up" process, after you have made major content revisions. That way, you won't be constantly interrupting your writing (or revising) process by puzzling over spelling and punctuation. And there's no point polishing text that may later be cut from your paper.
Customize your Microsoft Word dictionary. As mentioned above, you can tell spell-check to add a word, as you have spelled it, to your dictionary. Forever after, it will leave you alone as long as you spell this word correctly. (This might be a relief if you've decided to major in Biospychosocial Othering!) If you spell the word incorrectly, it will tap you on the shoulder and suggest how you can fix the error. Note that there are also many other ways in which you can "customize" spell-check. As you get more comfortable you may want to try some of them.
Above all else, remember: As your friend, spell-check can support you, but it can't do your job for you. It's there to help you use your writing and editing skills by giving you reminders and suggestions about spelling, grammar, and so on. But on the journey of your writing process, you must never fall asleep at the wheel and expect spell-check to steer you to a perfect paper. If you are not confident about your spelling, grammar, or punctuation, look things up, visit the Writing Center, or check out our handouts. Remember: you are smarter than spell-check!

How to run spell-check

First, you'll need to be sure your word processing program is set up to run spelling and grammar checks. In Microsoft Word, go to the "Tools" menu and choose "Options." Click on the tab that says "Spelling & Grammar." You can now decide what you would like to have spell-check examine. (If spell-check is getting on your nerves, you can use this menu to turn it off.)

Now that the program is set up, you are ready to use it to check your document. Open up your paper. On the "Tools" menu, select "Spelling and Grammar." (There may also be a button on your toolbar that says "ABC"—if so, you can click this instead.) A window will pop up and display a highlighted word or portion of your text. This window is where spell-check will point out words and phrases that may be incorrect. Ideally, it will also explain what is wrong and/or propose a solution, in the lower box under the heading "Suggestions."

The buttons on the right represent your options about how to respond to spell-check's comments. Not all of these will appear every time; which ones show up depends on the nature of the (possible) error. So: imagine that you have run spell-check and it has identified a particular word or phrase as problematic. You need to decide whether to accept its advice. Here's an overview of your options (there is a button for each one):

"Ignore Once" means you choose to leave this particular word or phrase as is, but that if spell-check notices something similar again later, you want to know about it.
"Ignore All" means that you want to leave the word or phrase alone here and in any other place where it may show up in this document.
"Change" means that you're taking spell-check's advice and want to switch the current spelling or grammatical construction to one of the suggestions it has generated for you. If you press change, the spelling or construction that is highlighted under "Suggestions" will be automatically substituted into your paper. If there is more than one suggestion, this means you are accepting the one that appears at the top of the list. You may choose a different suggestion instead by clicking on it.
"Change All" performs the same function instantly in every place the error appears throughout the document.
"Ignore Rule" means that you don't want to hear any more about this particular issue anywhere in the paper. You're doing things your own way, thank you very much.
"Explain" will make spell-check tell you why it thinks there is a problem here. This option is usually only available for grammatical or punctuation issues.
"Add to Dictionary" means to leave a word exactly as you typed it, and to add it to your personal dictionary in Word. Once a word has been added, spell-check will always count this word as correct, and will even try to correct you if you misspell it in the future.

You can also consult spell-check on a case-by-case basis without fully running the program.

You may notice as you work that colored squiggly lines appear under certain words or phrases that you write. That's spell-check trying to call your attention to something it thinks may be problematic. If you right-click on the squiggly line, a popup window will give you an abbreviated menu of the above options.

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Bibliography

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Press Release, National Juneteenth Holiday Campaign, "Massachusetts to Become the 25th State to Recognize Juneteenth as a State Holiday." June 15, 2007. http://www.juneteenth.us/pressrelease9.html, accessed 8-23-07.

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