Running the spell checker
Running the Spell Checker:
This is the final area to know before you have created a basic but good document in Microsoft Word. This lesson teaches you how to open the Spell Checker and use the necessary buttons to correct the misspelled words in your document. It may also find areas of your document that suggest better words to use than you chose.
The Spell Checker
Naturally, you will need to open your document where you need to check the spelling. Once you open the document, press the F7 key. This will start the Spell Checker. The checker will automatically open and start looking for words that are not found in the dictionary on your computer. Word has a pretty good checker and will find most words that are misspelled. It even does pretty good with common names. You will find that it doesn't give suggestions to advanced medical or legal terms.
When it finds a word that it does not know, it will stop on that word and then give you a list of words that it thinks you might have meant to type. JAWS will speak something like this:
"Not found, (misspelled word), suggestions, (most likely suggestion)
This may not mean too much to you right now so let me give you an example of how it works. Lets say that you had misspelled the word "field" in your document You misspelled it like this, "fielld".
JAWS will say "Spell check dialog". Then it will speak the misspelled word "fielld". And then it will spell the wrong way you wrote it, "f-i-e-l-l-d". The next thing JAWS will speak, is the word that the spell checker thinks you meant to type, "field" and, it will spell it also, "f i e l d.
At this point, you can do one of three things. You can choose a button that best fits the way you want to respond to the choice it gave you, you can change it yourself or you can choose a word from a list of words that the spell checker gives you.
Suggested Word in a
list
The word that the checker is suggesting for you is located at the top of a list of words that you could also choose from. To see if your word is in the list of choices, press the tab twice and then down arrow through the words. If you found the word you meant to type, press enter to change the wrong word to the one you are on in the list.
How to respond to
the suggested word
The buttons you can choose are as follows:
Ignore once button, Ignore all button, Add to dictionary button, Change button, change all button
If you typed the word twice in a row, you will be given an extra choice of deleting the second repeated word. JAWS will say repeated word if this happens.
If you choose one of the buttons, they are in response to the word that the checker is suggesting. You can just press the tab key to move through the list of choices until you land on the button you want and then press enter or the spacebar. If you do not want to tab through all the buttons every time a word is found, you can press the following keystrokes to quickly activate your button of choice.
- To ignore the choice once, "alt I". This is if you know you only typed it once and it is spelled correctly like a persons name that isnt in the dictionary.
- To ignore the word every time it is found in your document, "alt G". This is if you know you typed it several times correctly.
- To keep the word as it is, and add the word to the dictionary, so it won't ask you again, "alt A". This is for names or uncommon words that you have typed correctly.
- To change your word to what the spell checker is suggesting, "alt C".
- To change your misspelled word to what the checker is suggesting every time it finds the same word, press "alt L". This is only when you know you have typed that word more than once in your document.
- If the checker had found a repeated word that you want to delete, press "alt D".
Changing the word
yourself
Now if the checker does not find a word to suggest to you or it does not give you the word in the list, you may need to type it in yourself. Press escape and you will be returned to your document so you can fix it manually. The cursor will be placed somewhere near the word in question. Now find the word and arrow through the word to delete or insert the letters needed to fix the misspelled word. Then, press f7 again to start the spell checker from that point.
Advanced options
Here is a nice thing to try! If you wish to check the spelling of the word you just typed, put your cursor somewhere in the word and press the Applications key. This will activate a mini spell checker just for the word you are on at the time. It only gives you a list of words that might be what you want. Arrow to the word that best fits the word you meant and press enter.
Happy writing!
Enter on the link below to move on to the last lesson in Microsoft Word. Printing an envelope
This is the end of the spell checker lesson.