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About this lesson
Learn how to spellcheck, find a better word, or count the total words in a document.
Exercise files
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Proofing - Exercise.docx29.7 KB Proofing - Exercise Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Proofing
Learn the importance of the features included in Proofing Tools: spelling and grammar check, finding a better word, or counting 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,
Editor Button
- A right-hand Editor pane appears and provides more options.
- When “Spelling” is activated, one feature is the “speaker” icon to listen to the pronunciation of a word.
Thesaurus
- Click the Review Ribbon, then 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 the total words in your document, click the Review Ribbon, then Word Count
- 00:04 When we start with the Review ribbon, notice the far left-hand side,
- 00:08 there is a group called Proofing.
- 00:09 In here, we have Spelling and Grammar, Thesaurus, Word Count, and an Editor,
- 00:14 which handles a lot of the other items.
- 00:17 I'll go ahead and click on Editor and noting that the tooltip does say F7.
- 00:21 Now, the document on our screen is full of spelling errors with red squiggle
- 00:25 underlines.
- 00:26 And you float your mouse over the top, it turns pink.
- 00:28 And grammatical errors, blue double underlines.
- 00:31 Floating your mouse over the top, it turns to light blue.
- 00:34 I'll go ahead and activate the Editor,
- 00:36 and you can see that a new panel appears on the right-hand side.
- 00:40 It's showing me that 59% is accurate,
- 00:43 but, my goodness, there's a lot of red in there.
- 00:46 When I first click this, it'll go straight to spelling errors.
- 00:49 But look down below, it's telling me there's 12 spelling errors,
- 00:53 4 grammatical errors.
- 00:54 It's also checking the refinements for clarity, conciseness, all sounds good.
- 00:59 Similarity, this actually gives me the choice to check online to see if anything
- 01:03 was copied or pasted.
- 01:04 I can tell you this is default Microsoft text, so yes,
- 01:08 a lot of this will be found online.
- 01:10 Insights, Documents stats, it's basically the Readability Stats.
- 01:15 We'll see these at the end of the spell-check as well.
- 01:16 I'll click OK, and down at the bottom, giving feedback.
- 01:20 All right, let's go up to the top.
- 01:22 Let's hit this red line right here and watch what happens.
- 01:25 It launches straight into the spelling errors.
- 01:28 It's telling me that that particular word over here is not in the dictionary.
- 01:32 It gives me a suggestion, tells me what it means.
- 01:35 I'll hit the Speaker, it'll pronounce it for me.
- 01:37 >> Misspelled powerful, video provides a powerful way to help you prove your point.
- 01:43 >> Now, I can hit the dot, dot, dot on the option.
- 01:47 I can change all those versions of that misspelled word.
- 01:50 Yes, I want to do that.
- 01:51 Add it to autocorrect so I never have to change it again.
- 01:54 Yes, I want to do that.
- 01:55 Read it aloud.
- 01:58 >> Powerful, similar to influential, strong, effective.
- 02:04 >> Or I can have it spell it out.
- 02:06 >> P-O-W-E-R-F-U-L.
- 02:08 >> So it's teaching us as it's going through this.
- 02:12 I'll hit the dot, dot, dot, and I choose, Add to Autocorrect.
- 02:16 Now, it's moving on to a grammatical error with a double blue underline.
- 02:19 It says, Grammar right here and it is suggesting which one I should use.
- 02:24 I'll go ahead and take that suggestion just by clicking straight on it.
- 02:28 Okay, I'm going to go ahead and quickly click through the rest of this.
- 02:43 As soon as it's done doing all these spelling and
- 02:46 grammar checks, up pops the Readability Stats again.
- 02:49 Notice over here, it gives me a word count, character count,
- 02:53 how many sentences, paragraphs.
- 02:54 All of these are calculated into a grade level score at sixth grade.
- 02:58 So I'll go ahead and click OK here, and we're done with that part.
- 03:02 Now, let's move on to the next part.
- 03:05 I'm going to double-click the Word document right here,
- 03:08 come up to the top and hit Thesaurus.
- 03:10 Notice, the tooltip says, Shift+F7.
- 03:13 Personally, I have memorized that in my life.
- 03:15 I'm always jumping into thesaurus to find a better word to use.
- 03:19 So I'll click on that, and here we have options to the word.
- 03:22 Notice, the (n) means noun and the (v) means verb.
- 03:28 So if I'm going to document a conversation, that would be record or
- 03:32 verify.
- 03:33 If I'm creating a document, that would be a text, file, article.
- 03:37 So at any point, we can change these.
- 03:40 I'll go ahead and choose file by clicking the drop-down arrow and hitting Insert,
- 03:44 and it will replace the word document.
- 03:46 Go ahead and click, there it is.
- 03:49 The next part is the Word Count.
- 03:51 It shows up on my screen, tells me how many pages, how many words.
- 03:55 Well, if I'm writing a letter to the editor of the local paper,
- 03:59 sometimes they tell you less than 250 words.
- 04:02 Well, this is how I find out how close I am to it.
- 04:05 I'll go ahead and close on this.
- 04:07 And please note, in the bottom left-hand corner of our Microsoft Word screen,
- 04:12 we have Section 1, Page 1, and a word count.
- 04:14 Now, if your word count isn't showing up down here,
- 04:17 simply right-click anywhere on one of these, for instance, the Page 1 of 1.
- 04:22 I can hit my right mouse button, and now I can scroll up and
- 04:25 put a check mark on Word Count and Character.
- 04:28 All right, that's it for spell-check.
- 04:30 Remember, don't ever print a document or
- 04:33 finalize it until you've run through the spelling and grammar check.
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