Spell Check Fun in Word 2010

I discovered a little, ahem, shall we say "feature" in Word 2010 when it comes to establishing spelling settings. Granted, what I wanted to do is a little farther along the esoteric line than simple spell checking. What I needed to do is to establish the paragraph style to not be checked, but have a character style that overlays the paragraph get spell checked. Like I said, a little further along the esoteric line.

This is useful in the legal arena where you are (for example) modifying established legal language, but can't actually change it, only identify suggested changes. You'd need any modifications you are making (the character style) to be spell checked, but the underlying legal language (the base paragraph style) cannot be inadvertently, or accidentally changed during a spell check.

Establishing the underlying paragraph style as don't check spelling is pretty straightforward: in the style definition box click the Format Dropdown and select Language. In the subsequent dialog, click the "Do not check spelling or grammar" box and accept the style change:

Now is when it gets to be a bit interesting. After you have done that, you can open the style dialog for your character style, and try the same thing. Sure, you can attempt to set "Do not check...", but it doesn't retain the setting. What you need to do is a two-step process.

1. Change the language of the character style to anything BUT the same language as the underlying paragraph style, and at the same time, tick the box for "Do not check spelling or grammar." Then accept and save the settings. 
2. Go back to the style definition and select to modify. On this second go-round, change the language BACK to the language you want it to be (assuming you want the language of the character style to be the same as the paragraph style). Changing it back doesn't affect the spelling setting, and the language is matched to the paragraph style.
   

Voila! You now have a paragraph style that does not check spelling, and a character style overlying it that does.

Exceptions (Exclusions) Dictionary

In the legal world, things can go badly, if, for example, you are identifying a pubic law (instead of a public one) or refer to a statue of limitations rather than a statute of limitations. Both of the words used, are correctly spelled, and likely will not be flagged during normal spelling and grammar checking. Often, they slip through human proofing as well.

The best way to ensure these words do not slip through is to have them show as misspelled all the time, and yes, you can do that. Create a plain text file and put the correctly spelled words you want to have flagged as  in it. Name the file as shown below (Check with Microsoft for the file name for other languages): 

• English(US): ExcludeDictionaryEN0409.lex 
  
• English (UK): ExcludeDictionaryEN0809.lex 
  
• English (Canada): ExcludeDictionaryEN1009.lex  
  

Then save the file to:

                     C:Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\UProof 

The next time Word is run, the words you've identified in that list will show as misspelled. This way, you will see the words with the red squiggly underline and you can be sure the word is being used in the correct way.