« System Preferences | How to zoom in on the screen | Main | iPhoto | Keywords »
August 05, 2005
Mail | Spell check
Rather than having and maintaining a separate spell checker for every application, OS X includes a system-wide spell checker which is shared by all applications. So rather than having to teach your text editor how to spell "email" and then having to teach your email application how to spell "email," a single correction will affect the spelling in all your applications. Which is nice...
You probably most use OS X's spell checker in Mail, so we'll use that as an example.
To access the system-wide spell checker in Mail:
From the EDIT menu, select SPELLING, and then SPELLING...
This will open a window that looks like this:
First, if you look at the drop down menu under "Dictionary," you'll notice that the Americans have appropriated the English language, so you'll want to change it to the appropriate regional variation on 'standard' English - "British English!" Set it to "British English" and it will always use the British dictionary. Now you can type "colour" and the spell checker won't tell you it's spelt wrong. I have mine set to Canadian English, in a vain attempt to maintain my cultural heritage while in exile.
In the illustration above, I had the word "email" highlighted in my message when I selected "Spelling..."
Then I clicked the "Learn" button to teach the dictionary the word "email" (which it obviously didn't know).
I'll assume you can figure out what the rest of the buttons do.
Posted by Brad at August 5, 2005 01:22 PM
