Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 12. Language Tools

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Spelling

• Thesaurus

• Grammar

• Research

• Translation

Word provides a variety of proofing tools, including a spelling checker, a thesaurus, and a grammar checker. Another tool included under this umbrella is hyphenation. Although technically it's not really proofing, the hyphenation feature enables you to make sure that hyphens are where they're supposed to be and that you don't accidentally hyphenate proper names.

Proofing—short for proofreading—ultimately still is in your hands, but judicious use of the tools that come with Word can make the job quicker and easier. Of course, if you make tons of what Word considers to be mistakes, then grammar checking, spelling checking, and pausing to use the thesaurus can make the job more tedious and take a lot longer. Assuming you're right and Word is wrong, this chapter provides the information you need to temper Word's red, green, and blue editing pencils. If you don't know what's meant by that colorful sentence yet, you will by the end of this chapter!

Spelling

Word can check the spelling of a word, a selection, or a whole document. Word can include not only the main built-in word list, but also word lists you create. It can also use third-party lists such as medical, legal, and technical dictionaries. You can also format your documents using Language, which is a character formatting attribute—proofing tools for Spanish and French come with Office 2007, making language settings (for those two, at least) more ...