Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: Enabling Built-in Spell Check
Mac OS X offers a system-wide built-in spell checker. Many OS X applications including Mail, Pages, TextEdit, Safari and iChat AV (among others) allow you to take advantage of this feature to find and correct spelling mistakes. To enable spell checking in an application, control-click (or right-click on a two-button mouse) a text field or text entry area. Choose Spelling from the contextual pop-up menu and then make sure that Check Spelling as You Type is checked. If it is not checked, just select it to check it. Selecting it again disables the feature.
More after the jump...
When enabled, the spell checker marks words that it does not recognize with a dashed red underline. You may sometimes encounter a slight delay between typing words and seeing them get flagged. Make a habit of looking back at material you've already typed to see whether the underline appears.
To correct a flagged word that you recognize is wrong, control-click (right-click) the word. A list of possible corrections appears at the top of the contextual pop-up. To replace a word, just select it from the pop-up menu.
Here are a few spell checking tips:
- You must enable spell check separately for each application. Enabling spell checking in TextEdit will not enable spell checking in Safari.
- To open an interactive spell checking box, choose Spelling -> Spelling... from the contextual pop-up menu. You can use this dialog whether or not you have enabled spell checking for your application.
- To spell check in a different language, use the Spelling dialog's Dictionary pop-up.
- You can teach the dictionary new words. Enter a word in the field to the left of Correct and click Learn.
Thanks, Callum.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SjG said 9:08PM on 5-07-2007
Another interesting thing is you can simultaneously spellcheck a document in two languages (say, for example, that you're writing in English with paragraphs in Spanish):
Go to the Dictionary pop-up, and select "Multilingual". You don't even need to specify the languages. It does slow down the spellcheck by a bit, but I don't notice it except on huge documents (and I'm on a 1GHz G4).
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Leonard Nimrod said 9:11PM on 5-07-2007
The built in dictionary is a nice app that is often useful. With most of Apple's apps you can hover over any word and press Command+^+D to get the definiton instantly.
This, however, is an odd key combination and the info goes away as soon as you release the keys.
If you set it up with a toggle key,like F12, the mini-dictioanry will stay put until you hit the toggle key again.
You can also now move the mouse to any word(s) you wish for instant access to multiple definitions.
You can even can the default of the dictionary to access the thesaurus instead of the dictionary.
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Ronald Poi said 10:41PM on 5-07-2007
How can i make it default on Safari instead of right-clicking everytime?
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fini said 11:18PM on 5-07-2007
yea anyone know how to keep it default in all text fields in safari, some txt fields reset themselves.
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john russell said 11:22PM on 5-07-2007
Even after using Mac OS X for more than a year, I was still wondering why a select few apps were not spell checking automatically.
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runar.dankel said 1:57PM on 5-08-2007
I'm hoping for better language support in Leopard. Like e.g. Norwegian. Just at the top og my head....
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Steven Haddy said 7:02PM on 6-22-2007
Does anyone know how to add medical or other specialized spell checking to the iWork applications? There are several for Word an dPowerpoint, but none (that I can find) for Keynote or Pages.
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