Contextual spelling: US English only?

Laurie asked us via the Email/Contact link:

I was always under the impression that the Contextual Spell Checker only works if your language is set to English (US) rather than English (UK). However, I have recently seen the blue squiggly lines appear for English (UK).

Can you confirm whether this has come about as a result of a specific Office update?

The contextual speller works for all varieties of English (UK, US, Australian, Canadian). This has been the case since the launch of Office 2007 and there has not been any specific update for that version of Office. If you write something like this:

(a) When inserting an Excel chart into a Word document, the chart looses its color when the focus is set to the document.

(b) When inserting an Excel chart into a Word document, the chart looses its colour when the focus is set to the document.

You will see the blue squiggles under looses whether you are in US English or in UK English mode. If you set (b) to UK English to make sure colour is not red-squiggled, looses will nevertheless be flagged as a contextual mistake and the contextual speller will suggest loses.

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to dispel that rumo(u)r, Laurie.

-- Thierry Fontenelle (Program Manager)

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2007
  PingBack from http://www.soundpages.net/computers/?p=4444

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2007
  How come it never seems to magically recognize Canadian English? I'll write cheque ten times and Word insists each time that I'm incorrect.

• Anonymous
  November 12, 2007
  Louis, Can you give examples of Canadian English words that are flagged by your speller? You can set the language of your text to "English (Canada)" and the speller then uses the Canadian English lexicon. Have you tried using that setting? When I do it, words like "marvellous", "cheque", "neighbour", etc are accepted and considered as valid. Thierry