In the days of handwritten and typewritten documents, people might have tolerated a typographical or grammatical error or two because correcting such errors without creating a mess was difficult. Word processors like Word have built-in spelling and grammar checkers, so now documents that contain these types of errors are likely to reflect badly on their creators.

Word provides two tools to help you with the chore of eliminating spelling and grammar errors: the AutoCorrect and Spelling And Grammar features.

Have you noticed that Word automatically corrects some misspellings as you type them? This is the work of the AutoCorrect feature. AutoCorrect corrects commonly misspelled words, such as adn to and, so that you don’t have to correct them yourself. AutoCorrect comes with a long list of frequently misspelled words and their correct spellings. If you frequently misspell a word that AutoCorrect doesn’t change, you can add it to the list in the AutoCorrect dialog box.

If you deliberately mistype a word and don’t want to accept the AutoCorrect change, you can reverse it by clicking the Undo button on the Standard toolbar before you type anything else.

Although AutoCorrect ensures that your documents are free of common misspellings, it doesn’t detect random typographical and grammatical errors. For those types of errors, you can turn to the Spelling And Grammar feature for help. You might have noticed that as you type, Word underlines suspected spelling errors with red wavy underlines and possible grammatical errors with green wavy underlines. You can right-click an underlined word or phrase to display suggested corrections.

If you want to check the spelling or grammar of the entire document, it is easier to click Spelling And Grammar on the Tools menu than to deal with underlined words and phrases individually. Word then works its way through the document and displays the Spelling And Grammar dialog box if it encounters a potential error.

To change a flagged error, double-click a replacement in the Suggestions box, or type your own replacement into the Not In Dictionary box, and then click Change.

If the error is a misspelling, the Spelling And Grammar checker suggests corrections; if the error is a suspected breach of grammar, it tells you which rule you might have broken, and suggests corrections. The buttons available in the Spelling And Grammar dialog box are dynamic and change to those most appropriate for fixing the error. For example, for a grammatical error, you are given the opportunity to ignore the rule you have broken throughout the document.

You can change the Spelling And Grammar feature settings from the Spelling And Grammar page of the Preferences dialog box.

You can specify many settings for the Spelling And Grammar feature, including the writing style appropriate to the document.

To display the Spelling And Grammar page of the Preferences dialog box: