How To Spell Check Your Documents On a Mac

Spell checking on a Mac uses a simple set of controls that are the same for all Apple apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit, Mail, Messages and Safari. You can have suspected mispellings corrected automatically, or simply underlined for later review, You can review each mispelling with a keyboard shortcut, or bring up a control panel where you can ignore or learn new words. If you need to, you can edit the list of learned words directly.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at how to use Spell Check on your Mac. 
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Using Spell Check on your Mac is pretty straight forward. Best of all it works the same way between apps. At least the apps that Apple creates. So here I am in Pages. We'll start there and learn the basics. I've got a few paragraphs typed here and I have three spelling mistakes. You can see, just by default, it recognizes those are spelling mistakes and it has them underlined with this red dotted line. Now all the controls for spell checking are found under Edit and then you look for Spelling and Grammar. Notice that I have checked Check Spelling While Typing and Correct Spelling Automatically. So let's uncheck both of those and start from scratch. You can see when I uncheck those no longer are the errors underlined.
Now if I were to go in and turn on Check Spelling While Typing it will underline with those red dots anything it finds that's wrong. Now that seemed to happen pretty instantly with just these three paragraphs. It will take a little time if say you're editing a book of a hundred pages. Now you may rarely see this dotted red line because if you have Correct Spelling Automatically turned on then as you type the words it will correct it. For instance let me try to type this incorrectly spelled word here. You could see that it corrected the word. Instead of a red underline I get a blue dotted underline just to indicate that it changed something. But that blue underline will disappear after you type the next word. So this prevents spelling mistakes right as they happen.
If you prefer to type without the auto correction but still see when there's a word it thinks is misspelled simple turn off Correct Spelling Automatically but leave on Check Spelling While Typing. Now if you have some spelling mistakes in here you can review them in one of two ways. You can go to Check Document Now or Show Spelling and Grammar. You can see the keyboard shortcuts there are the Command key and colon and the Command key and semicolon. So in other words Command and the same key but with or without the Shift. So if I were to do Command and semicolon it will jump to the next word that it thinks is misspelled. I can continue to do Command semicolon to go through the words and it will loop through the document. So it's a quick way to check for misspelled words
If instead I do Command Shift and then the same key, in other words Command colon, then it brings up this little window here. It shows me the word currently selected and it selects it there. It shows me the correction. Sometimes there will be more than one here. You can choose which one you want. So this is a more precise way of correct spelling. You can then click Change here which will change it and then move on to the next word. You can see here it gives me several different options. So I get to choose what is the correct word. I could skip this by doing Find Next and it will leave the incorrectly spelled word there. I can also choose Ignore so it won't go back to it as it loops around through the document. I can choose Learn so it adds that word there. So maybe if this is a name it will actually learn it and it won't find it elsewhere misspelled throughout the document or in the future.
Note you can set the language here. So you can just have it automatically figured out based on the words or you can set it to a specific language for Spell Check.
Now you don't even have to bring up that window to see some suggestions. For instance if I just put my cursor there at the end of the word you could see it comes up with some suggestions. So you can see it there for that word. You could see it there for that word. You could see it there for that word. It seems to work when you put the cursor after the last letter. Of course you'll also it the same thing when you first type the word. It appears there and you can select it or hit X to say ignore that.
Now what's great is that it works the same in different apps. So here I am in TextEdit and if I start typing and you can see I've misspelled a word there and it does the same red underline. I go to Edit, Spelling and Grammar, and I have the same options. I could use Command semicolon. I can use Command colon and choose from options here. It even remembers the words and will remember them across different apps. This even works in important locations like when composing a new email message. You can see I have the same exact options here as I have elsewhere. I do have a little variation here in Mail. I can do Check Spelling, While Typing, Never, or Before Sending. This works in the Messages app as well. You can see there it Auto Corrected it. If I go to Edit, Spelling and Grammar, you can see I've got Check Spelling While Typing, Correct Spelling While Typing. I can do  Automatically. I can even use those other tools as well. It also works in Safari if you're typing something into a form. You've got the same options here. 
Now what if you add a word to the Dictionary, like this one, and then you decide you made a mistake and you want to remove that word from the Dictionary. There are a couple of ways to do it. One is you can select the word and Control click or use two fingers on the trackpad and then you should see Unlearn Spelling. That will remove it from the Dictionary.  You can also edit your dictionary directly. To do that in the Finder choose Go and then hold the Option key down until Library appears. Then you'll be in your User Library. Under there you can look for a folder called Spelling. Go into that and you're going to see a file called Local Dictionary. Double click that and it will open up in TextEdit and you'll see all the words that you've added. You can edit this document directly. So removing a word from this, or adding some.
Now you're Mac will change what you're typing using some other settings as well. So go to the Apple Menu and then System Preferences and then Keyboard and then Text. You'll see this checkbox here Correct Spelling Automatically which is a lot like the one we've been using. This is in fact the default. But any app that you've set it in specifically will override that. You can also turn on Capitalize words automatically. Add a period with a double space at the end of a sentence. You can choose the default language for Spell Check. You can choose whether or not Smart Quotes for single or double quotes are used and corrected. 
Then of course you have these replacements here. So some things that you type will automatically be replace using this list here. Of course you can add to that. But if you've ever wondered why say typing parentheses c and then close parentheses automatically changes to a copyright symbol it's because the rule is here. So if you don't want to use that you simply hit the minus button to remove it. 
Now it's going to be very different if you're not using an Apple app. For instance Microsoft Word works completely different. You don't find that stuff there at all. It's under Tools, Spelling and Grammar and it looks and works completely differently because, of course, Microsoft wants it to look and work just like it does on Windows. So keep this in mind when using third party apps although some third party apps do adopt Apple's way of doing things.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Spell Check Your Documents On a Mac”

Carlos Rivera

5 years ago

Excellent tutorial! I have many documents that contain both English and Spanish text. If I set language to English the ones in Spanish are highlighted as misspelled. Is there a way to set a Page document to 'multilingual' so that all text regardless of the language used are spell checked?

Gary Rosenzweig

Carlos: Set it to "Automatic By Language" and it should work.

That’s exactly how I have it set up and I would have assumed the same But no, if I open the document it’ll show me the Spanish words as being misspelled.

Carlos: Are the English and Spanish words mixed in the same paragraph?

Yes. In the one file I was looking at. I just tired a test of creating a new document with one paragraph in English and another in Spanish and sure enough it did spell check correctly.

Rod Magner

I cannot locate the "Library." My list of availables under the GO in finder is identical to yours with the exception of "Library".

Rod: Watch very carefully at 5:37. "Choose Go, and hold the Option key down..."

Comments Closed.

How To Spell Check Your Documents On a Mac

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Spell Check Your Documents On a Mac”

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