Comments inline.
CH
<snip>
I don't normally get deeply into dictionary queries -- Daiya, Beth and
Corentin, and John McGhie, are the experts, but that offer to parade in the
streets is *very* tempting (and subject to audit by one Elliott Roper,
exiled in the UK) ... ;-)
So I'll try to clarify a little and perhaps encourage Daiya, Beth et al, who
are closer to your time zone, to take over if they feel like doing so before
my time zone comes into wake-up mode again. I think I can help by posing a
few questions.
I am 100% certain that my system is completely configured for UK English.
As in when you installed the Mac OS, and when you installed Office -- you
nominated UK. OK.
And we are talking only about documents and templates *you* have created,
never created by others?
And you have more than the Normal template on which the document is based (a
darned good habit)?
And the 50% of the time is with a given template -- i.e., sometimes it's US
English and sometimes UK? (*That*, I have to say, is the bizarre bit.
Beth's post aimed to apply a quick, effective band-aid solution to any text
that wasn't UK English, to which mine was a follow-up. But I have never
experienced the language setting not "sticking" myself. Anyway, by way of
clarification, although you probably know it already, this is what John
McGhie once had to say):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CONSISTENCY WITH LANGUAGES
Word sets its language on the fly, paragraph by paragraph. The language
setting is stored in the style for each paragraph, and can be overridden by
the direct formatting applied to the paragraph.
[John was answering a query about templates with different languages --
i.e., deliberately so]-> You need to create a new template for each
language. In each template, set the default language to be the one you want
to work in. Then go through each style that you use and make sure that it
has adopted the change. If not, change the language of the style to be the
language of the template.
Then every time you create a new document from that particular template, the
language will be correct in every paragraph.
Getting the change to "stick" in an already-created document is a bit of
work, because you need to change the language in multiple places. You first
need to go through the styles and ensure that each of the ones in use or
likely to be used has the correct language. You then need to go through each
of the paragraphs in the document and check that it has not been
directly-formatted with a different language. Don't forget the headers and
footers, and the TOC.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next thing I'd look at is the default language in your templates. Daiya
observed:
"Generally, when you set the default in Tools | Language, the *only* thing
it
affects is the Normal template and any new documents generated henceforth.
All the templates that came with Office, yes, are probably set to US
English. If you have a set of templates that you expect to use, you will
have to change the language formatting for each one. I think the best way to
do this will be to use Tools | Language and click Default *when in a
document based on the template*. Default will add that formatting to the
Normal style of the active template (at least that's what the message I got
said. If you have problems, open up the actual template and try it)."
That last comment is very appropriate. Have you opened up all your
template(s) and checked what language is set in Normal style?
You said:
"is there any way to alter the normal template and have it stick? I'm coming
from 2003 and you had the Language Tools and you could delete US English and
force UK (or whatever) to be the default and it would stick."
Yes, that's our experience too. Let us know what happens when you follow
Daiya's advice. If you don't get UK English, open the Normal template,
click in a Normal styled paragraph (unless you have got rid of them, which I
and others do), choose Format menu -> Style and try amending it there.
Repeat in your own templates.
Post back with those answers and perhaps things can be narrowed down from
there ...
I'd
settle for Aussie English because there's no difference - is there...?
The UK dictionary always gets caught up on Oodnagalarbie or Wagga Wagga
(kindly resist temptation to make droll comment about the latter -- I have
lived in that lovely town, and Bill Kerr, the "Boy from Wagga Wagga" on
Hancock's Half Hour, lives not far from it). Other than that, the only real
difference is the preference for always using "ise" and "isation" and never
the "z" version, no matter what. I variously use Australian and UK
dictionaries. But in no way was I suggesting that you use this variant of
the mother tongue ;-)
If you
can show me how to alter the Word global template so that the UK setting
sticks then I will paint myself green and gold and parade the streets
declaring Australia to be the best cricketing nation on the planet... (even
though we did let you win at Lord's... Well Glenny and Shane are getting on a
bit now, we didn't want them to be too embarrassed...)
<I deleted your next line and will deny it ever existed.>
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
============
. Oh well ...