This is a problem often encountered. You open a Microsoft Word document sent by email and notice that words like ‘colour’ or ‘centre’ are given a wiggly red underline.
Obviously Word thinks they are spelled wrongly, and when you right-click the words to look at the suggested spellings, you see ‘color’ and ‘center’. Clearly Word wants to use American spelling, but why? And, more immediately, what to do about it?
The reason is fairly straightforward: Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar checkers support many different languages, and you can tell Word that certain parts of a document (anything from a single word to the entire document) are written in, say, French, Spanish or Italian. Word will then consult the appropriate dictionaries when it checks those parts of the document.
The solution is straightforward. Start by pressing Ctrl+A to select all the text in the document. Having done that, look at the status bar running along the bottom of the Word window and you’ll see English (U.S.) (in our subscriber’s case, or perhaps ‘French’ or some other language). Click on English (U.S.) and a ‘Language’ dialog will open. In this dialog, find and select English (U.K.) and click OK. That tells Word to treat the entire document as being written in British English, and all those errant red underlines will disappear.
Incidentally, this tip is worth keeping in mind if you do ever need to type in different languages in Word. Rather than putting up with all those foreign words being marked wrong, just select them, click that ‘Language’ button in the status bar, and select the appropriate language from the list.
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