british spelling/autocorrect exceptions - can't make it work!

[shambhavi]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hi,

I need to use some British word spellings for one of my clients. I entered the most common words into the autocorrect exceptions, but it is still autocorrecting them as I type back into the U.S. versions. What am I doing wrong? (The British spellings have also been entered in the custom dictionary.)

 

[Clive Huggan]

Forget about AutoCorrect for this purpose. And entering exceptions in the
custom dictionary is time-wasting.

You need to set the language of the text in your document to "English (UK)"
-- Tolls menu => Language => Mark selected text as: English (UK).

But wait around; another volunteer who specializes in dictionaries and
languages will come around soon and may well have a further comment about
dictionary management.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[John McGhie]

The only other step you might like to do is to create a separate custom
dictionary for English UK.

If you create a custom dictionary and name it "English UK", and put it first
in the list, it will be used in preference to English US but ONLY if you
have the text marked as English UK.

If your text is marked as English US (or not marked at all, if English US is
your default) then Word will use the other custom dictionary.

Always ensure that the last dictionary in the list is marked with "No
Language", otherwise you will have to create (and maintain!) a custom
dictionary for each of the 29 flavours of English. If you do not, and you
get text that is not in either American or UK, Word will have nowhere to add
words and will disable all the custom dictionaries.

Generally, I would not go down the multiple custom dictionaries path: it's
too much bother. But for specific requirements, when you know what you're
doing with it, it's a valuable tool. For example: I used a custom
dictionary with one client to contain the preferred spellings for hundreds
of computer terms they used.

Cheers

Forget about AutoCorrect for this purpose. And entering exceptions in the
custom dictionary is time-wasting.

You need to set the language of the text in your document to "English (UK)"
-- Tolls menu => Language => Mark selected text as: English (UK).

But wait around; another volunteer who specializes in dictionaries and
languages will come around soon and may well have a further comment about
dictionary management.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

This email is my business email ‹ Please do not email me about forum matters
unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[shambhavi]

Thanks for the help, all.

It seems that both of you are saying to mark selected text as English UK, but this presumes I have written the text already, correct? Or can I choose English UK at the beginning of a document?

 

[John McGhie]

Personally, I would make a template for English UK that has the language in
all of the styles set to English UK.

Unless you have unlinked your styles, that simply means setting the language
to English UK on the Normal style: every other style will then adopt the
setting.

If you then create documents from that template when working for the UK
customer, everything will spell in English UK, and you will never have to
think about it.

The alternative is to Select All before you begin to write, and set English
UK there. That setting will generally hold for the rest of the document.
However, you will get problems in figures, tables, fields, headers, footers
etc. Any time you depart from the Main Text Flow, the default styles will
take over and English US will rule. Far better to make an English UK
template for use to create all documents for that customer: then it will be
correct and stay correct.

The problem is that the Language attribute can be a property of a Word, a
sentence, a paragraph, or a style. And if you overlay them, the result is
additive. It's a very poorly designed mechanism, and difficult to see what
you are doing.

When I am working in English and American, I create two templates with the
same styles. But I change the colour of the font in one of them (in my
case, American) so I can see at a glance which style set is in use.

Just before sending the completed job, I switch the fonts to black. Because
I use inheritance from the Normal style, I only have to change the font
colour in ONE style and every style in the document changes instantly.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the help, all.

It seems that both of you are saying to mark selected text as English UK, but
this presumes I have written the text already, correct? Or can I choose
English UK at the beginning of a document?

This email is my business email ‹ Please do not email me about forum matters
unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

You can mark text as whatever language you choose any time you wish, before,
while, or after typing it Language is a formatting attribute just like
Bold, Italic, etc. If the entire document is to be formatted as a Language
other than what you have set as your default simply select the language
before you start typing. Even better, include the language attribute as a
part of the Styles you use.

OTOH, if you routinely need to create files in some other language format
you can change your Default Language or create templates to base those
documents on so you don't have to set the language each time.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac