Language tools
Language tools
In order to use this feature, the appropriate dictionaries for your language must be installed. By default, four dictionaries are installed: a spelling checker, a grammar checker, a hyphenation dictionary, and a thesaurus.
Spelling and grammar
Writer provides a spelling checker, which checks to see if each word in the document is in the installed dictionary. Also provided is a grammar checker, which can be used separately or in combination with the spelling checker.
Automatic Spell Checking
Automatic Spell Checking checks each word as it is typed and displays a wavy red line under any unrecognized words.
Right-click on an unrecognized word to open a context menu. You can click on one of the suggested words to replace the underlined word with the one selected. When the word is corrected, the line disappears.
If Automatic Spell Checking is not enabled click Tools > Automatic Spell Checking menu command to enable it.
A word marked as unrecognized is not necessarily misspelled. It can simply be a name, acronym, a technical term or any other word that is not on the dictionary.
Spell checking an entire document
To perform a combined spelling and grammar check on the document (or a text selection), click the Spelling and Grammar button 
on the Standard toolbar, or choose Tools > Spelling and Grammar. This checks the document or selection and opens the Spelling and Grammar dialog if any unrecognized words are found. In order to use this, the appropriate dictionaries must be installed.
If an unrecognized word is found it is highlighted in red on the top pane. The bottom pane contains suggested replacement words for the highlighted word. The option to restart from the beginning of the document is offered on reaching the end of the document.
The elements of the Spelling and Grammar dialog are as follows.
Not in dictionary
The sentence containing the error is displayed in the pane. If an unrecognized word is found it is highlighted. The sentence or the word can be edited in the pane.
Suggestions
The pane contains suggested replacement words for the highlighted word. Select a word and then select Change or Change All to replace it.
Text language
The language to be used for the spell and grammar checking can be selected from this list. If the spell check is enabled for this language, a check mark is displayed in front of it
Ignore
This one instance of the underlined word will be ignored while the document is open. Other instances, if they exist, will still be underlined. This setting is not stored with the document.
Ignore All
All instances of the word in the document will be ignored, and the word will be added to the IgnoreAllList user-defined dictionary.
Add to Dictionary
The word is added by default to the Standard dictionary.
Change
Replaces the unknown word with the suggested word. If the sentence was edited, the whole sentence is changed. For grammar, the suggested replacement is used to correct the text.
Change All
This replaces all instances of the word with the selected replacement word.
AutoCorrect
This behaves in a similar fashion to AutoCorrect described above. However, the word is not replaced and you must select one of the Change buttons.
Synonyms and the thesaurus
To access a short list of synonyms, right-click on a word and point to Synonyms on the context menu. A submenu of alternative words is displayed. Click on a word or phrase in the submenu to have it replace the highlighted word in the document.
The Thesaurus gives a more extensive list of alternative words and phrases. To use the thesaurus, click on Thesaurus from the Synonyms submenu. If the current language does not have a thesaurus installed, this feature is disabled.
Selecting the Document Language
The language you select for your document determines the dictionary used for spell check, thesaurus and hyphenation, the decimal and thousands delimiter used and the default currency format. The default language for each document is shown in the status bar.
Change the default language for the whole document
- Choose Tools > Options. Go to Language Settings > Languages.
- Under Default languages for documents, select the document language for all newly created documents. If you mark For the current document only, your choice will only apply to the current document.
Assign a language to selected text, a paragraph or the whole document
If a document contains text in a language other than the default, you must manually set the text with the correct language in order to use the language tools. In the example below the Greek is unrecognized by the spell checker because the document language is set to English.
However you can you can assign a language to selected text, a paragraph or all the text in a document. Select the text and choose Language > For Selection from the main menu and assign the correct language. Similarly you can assign a language to a paragraph or all the text.
