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About this lesson
Learn how to spellcheck, find a better word, or count the total words in a document.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Proofing.docx172.9 KB Proofing - Solution.docx
175.2 KB
Quick reference
Proofing Tools
Learn the importance of the features included in spellcheck, find a better word, or count the total words in a document.
When to use
It is very important to proofread your document before it leaves your computer. Misspellings and grammatical errors are viewed as unprofessional.
Instructions
Spelling and Grammar check
- Right Click any word with a red or blue underline and make your selections
- OR, click the Review Ribbon, , Spelling & Grammar
- A right-hand pane appears and provides a few more options.
- One feature is the “speaker” to listen to the pronunciation of a word.
Define
- Click the Review Ribbon,
, Define
- A right-hand pane appears and suggests you “Sign in” to Microsoft.
- A much faster option would be to go to Google, type “Define:” enter the word to see a dictionary definition.
Thesaurus
- click the Review Ribbon,
, Thesaurus
- Click the word you would like to replace
- Click the Thesaurus button (or press Shift + F7)
- The Thesaurus pane appears on the right side of the screen.
- Choose the arrow by the new word and click Insert.
Word Count
- If you need a count of total words in your document,
click the Review Ribbon,, Word Count
Kincaid Readability Statistics
- File Ribbon,
, Options
, Proofing
- Put a checkmark into
- This will show a grade-level review of your document. Keep in mind, it is measured by word count, word length, sentence length and paragraph length.
- For general business letters a 6th to 7th grade level is very good because it is short, simple and gets to the point. A college level paper should be anywhere above a 10th grade level
- 00:04 We're gonna review proofreading and editing,
- 00:07 don't over look this it's very important, it makes you look professional or not.
- 00:12 So on the exercise file there is a document full of misspelled words,
- 00:17 and you can recognize those by the red underline, and
- 00:19 grammar errors which have blue underlines.
- 00:22 The quickest way to handle those is a right-click on the word.
- 00:25 It shows you the correct spelling, gives you the option to ignore it or
- 00:28 to add it to the dictionary.
- 00:30 Generally, we reserve that for formal names.
- 00:32 So, I could just click on powerful and it's fixed.
- 00:36 Now I'm gonna click on the next one, which is click online.
- 00:39 I don't know what's wrong with it.
- 00:41 It's a grammatical word though.
- 00:42 Though, and I can just guess it, they're both spelled right, what's the problem?
- 00:46 Well, I can guess that it's probably too many spaces but
- 00:49 let's go in to a little more detail.
- 00:52 Instead of a right-click, go up to the review ribbon.
- 00:54 On the far left is spelling and grammar.
- 00:57 And I'm gonna go ahead and click on this one, and it shows me right here.
- 01:01 I can ignore it.
- 01:02 I can replace it with this, but
- 01:05 right down below, it's telling me what the problem is.
- 01:07 Space between words.
- 01:09 Oh.
- 01:10 Okay, so I can just click Change and now I'll go to the next word.
- 01:13 In this case, it's blue underlined so
- 01:16 it's not misspelled it's just the wrong spelling of the word.
- 01:19 And so it's telling me maybe you'd like to replace it with this.
- 01:22 And notice below it's giving me the descriptions of each word so
- 01:26 I can make the proper choice.
- 01:27 Now I'm gonna go ahead and change that one.
- 01:29 In this case, it's a misspelling.
- 01:32 I absolutely want to spell it correctly.
- 01:33 But hm, if you're new to the English language, and
- 01:36 you're still learning, look at this feature.
- 01:38 There's a little tiny speaker right here.
- 01:40 Listen what happens when I click that.
- 01:43 >> Professionally.
- 01:44 >> It's actually teaching you how to pronounce the words as well, I love that.
- 01:48 Also, I've got a Change All button, which means it sees multiple words misspelled,
- 01:53 the same word misspelled in the document, take care of it right now,
- 01:56 one fell swoop, and I'll hit Change All.
- 01:58 Okay, I'll leave it to you to finish that because I wanna
- 02:00 move on to the other features.
- 02:02 The next button up here is Define, so
- 02:04 I'm gonna go back here to the word professionally and I'm gonna hit Define.
- 02:09 Now notice the next pane comes out and just keeps the spelling pane open.
- 02:13 I'll go ahead and close that for now.
- 02:14 But on the dictionary it says to use dictionary you must
- 02:18 sign in using your Microsoft account.
- 02:20 You know folks there's an easier way.
- 02:22 Just go to google type in the word define.
- 02:24 Type in the word you want it to define and hit search and
- 02:29 it will come up with the same thing.
- 02:31 Notice this also has a speaker on it.
- 02:33 >> Element.
- 02:35 >> See, it's awesome.
- 02:37 All right, so I'm gonna close the dictionary.
- 02:40 What if I want to use a different word, rather than powerful, I'm looking for
- 02:43 a different word?
- 02:44 So we're gonna use a thesaurus.
- 02:46 I'm gonna double-click the word powerful, I'm gonna click on thesaurus.
- 02:49 Again, a task pane opens up, gives me any kind of option I want,
- 02:53 gives me a speaker, so I can listen to it.
- 02:57 If I decide I want to choose one of these, then I can click on, let's see,
- 03:02 this drop-down arrow and hit Insert.
- 03:04 Now watch the word powerful over on the left.
- 03:06 It's about to be replaced when I click.
- 03:08 And there it is, that easy to do it.
- 03:11 All right, the next feature over here is word count.
- 03:14 When I click word count, it's going to show me how many words are in this
- 03:18 document, how many characters, how many lines and paragraphs.
- 03:22 Its very interesting if you're a student or writing an article for a newsletter and
- 03:26 you have a limit on how many words they're going to allow,
- 03:29 this is how you keep track of that.
- 03:31 So 398 words, I have a 500 word limit, I can keep going.
- 03:36 Now there's another feature called the Kincaid Readability statistics.
- 03:41 If you go to the File ribbon.
- 03:43 Go down to Options and on the Proofing tab on the left,
- 03:49 way down here, Show readability statistics.
- 03:52 Put a check mark in there and hit OK, and
- 03:54 you'll only see this when you're done with the spell check.
- 03:58 So I would actually go through my spell check process and when I'm all done at
- 04:02 the very end, let me just show you what's gonna happen cuz I took a picture of it.
- 04:08 You'll see the readability statistics come up it'll give you the word count,
- 04:13 the average words per sentence, but right down here and
- 04:16 actual grade level, grade level 6.6.
- 04:18 Now one thing you need to know about readability statistics
- 04:22 you don't want too high of a grade level if you're in business.
- 04:25 You wanna stick around the seventh grade level for business letters.
- 04:29 If I'm in college I absolutely want a 12th grade level,
- 04:33 which means longer words, longer sentences longer paragraphs.
- 04:37 That's how this is measured, okay?
- 04:39 For business, keep it short and simple.
- 04:41 Sixth grade level for a business letter?
- 04:42 Absolutely fine.
- 04:44 That means most everyone's gonna understand what you're talking about.
- 04:46 All right, well, that's the lesson and
- 04:49 please make sure you proofread before you finish your documents.
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