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About this lesson
Learn how to spellcheck, find a better word, or count the total words in a document.
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Exercise files
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Proofing.docx58.8 KB
Quick reference
Proofing
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, Check Document.
- A right-hand Editor pane appears and provides a few more options.
- One feature is the “speaker” to listen to the pronunciation of a word.
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 and Word Count.
- 00:05 When you're working on a long document, you've gotta go through and spellcheck.
- 00:08 So on the Review ribbon, over on the left-hand side is a group called Proofing.
- 00:13 The top option is Check Document.
- 00:15 And notice a tool tip comes up, Editor (F7).
- 00:17 So you could just tap the F7 instead of going to Review > Check Document.
- 00:21 Then we have Thesaurus.
- 00:22 And notice that tool tip, Shift+F7.
- 00:24 That's a good one to memorize.
- 00:26 And then, of course, the Word Count.
- 00:28 In case you have to keep your document under a certain number of words,
- 00:31 this will help you keep track of that.
- 00:33 All right, let's go ahead and get started.
- 00:34 As you can see on the document on the screen,
- 00:37 some of my words have red underlines.
- 00:38 Those are spelling errors.
- 00:40 Some of them have blue underlines.
- 00:42 Those are grammatical or contextual errors.
- 00:45 So let's go ahead and start on the Review ribbon > Check Document.
- 00:48 You're gonna see something happen on the right-hand side, a task pane came open.
- 00:52 Now maybe that's too wide.
- 00:53 We can click and drag, and resize that.
- 00:56 And I can also double-click on my Review ribbon, double-click
- 00:59 to collapse my ribbon just temporarily, so I can see more of this task pane.
- 01:04 It has counted my spelling errors, it has counted my grammatical errors.
- 01:08 I don't have any clarity errors.
- 01:09 But it's really nice, it'll give you suggestions.
- 01:12 And notice at the bottom, it has Settings.
- 01:14 I would recommend clicking on Settings and just reviewing your options inside.
- 01:18 The settings for proofing, I tend to just leave these as they are.
- 01:23 But just in case you wanna make some changes, it's your personal preference.
- 01:27 All right, let's go ahead and check my spelling errors.
- 01:29 When I click on Spelling errors, it's finding the first one.
- 01:32 I guess I had clicked somewhere in the,
- 01:34 it finds the first one after my insertion point.
- 01:36 So here we have professionally, it's spelled wrong.
- 01:39 Right down here underneath, it gives me the option to just accept it.
- 01:42 If I click it, I can accept it.
- 01:44 But notice the drop-down arrow.
- 01:45 I highly recommend, every time you see a drop-down arrow, please click it,
- 01:49 because you get more options underneath.
- 01:51 Check this out, I'm gonna hit the Read Aloud.
- 01:53 Hold on, let me turn my volume down because it is pretty loud.
- 01:57 >> Professionally, similar to jobwise, skillfully, workwise.
- 02:03 I love that feature.
- 02:04 In case you're new to the English language,
- 02:06 this helps you pronounce our words.
- 02:08 Okay, Spell Out is going to be that same voice spelling this out.
- 02:12 I can Change All.
- 02:13 So that means if there's multiple misspellings of this word in my entire
- 02:17 document, when I hit Change All, it'll find them all and fix them all.
- 02:21 Okay, I'm gonna do that one, click.
- 02:23 Then it goes immediately to the next one.
- 02:25 Now in this case, I've got footer, I've got foster, I've got forte.
- 02:29 It's asking me which version of that misspelled word I want to use.
- 02:32 Well, I usually only use the word footer.
- 02:34 So in this case, I'm gonna hit the drop-down arrow.
- 02:37 But instead of Change All, I'm gonna hit the Add to AutoCorrect.
- 02:40 Now, Add to AutoCorrect is one of the best kept secrets in Word.
- 02:44 Because when I add this misspelling and tell it to replace it with footer, and add
- 02:49 it to AutoCorrect, the next time I spell it that way, it'll automatically fix it.
- 02:52 And I won't even ever know I made that misspelling.
- 02:55 So I'm gonna hit Add to AutoCorrect, and it moves on to the next one.
- 02:59 And see, do you see what's happening here?
- 03:00 I can just start to load up my AutoCorrect,
- 03:03 and it doesn't matter if I type them wrong in the future.
- 03:06 It'll automatically fix it, which makes my time in the document shorter.
- 03:10 All right, let's move on to the next one.
- 03:14 I'm gonna go to the back button right up here, 'cause I wanna go to my Grammar.
- 03:18 When I click on Grammar, now of course, it's telling me what the options are.
- 03:22 And I'm going to go ahead and just accept that option.
- 03:24 All right, that's enough about the spellcheck.
- 03:27 I'm gonna double-click to open up my ribbon again and show you the Thesaurus.
- 03:31 Which I love, love, love the Thesaurus.
- 03:34 All right, I'm gonna select the word prove.
- 03:37 Then I'm gonna click on the word Thesaurus.
- 03:40 And when I'm in here, notice I've got two panels open now.
- 03:42 Well, I'm just gonna go ahead and
- 03:44 close the Editor panel 'cause I wanna focus on the Thesaurus panel.
- 03:47 And underneath,
- 03:48 it gives me certain, I mean just other synonyms of the word prove.
- 03:53 So show, demonstrate, verify, evidence.
- 03:55 Now if I think, demonstrate is sorta close,
- 03:59 now if I click demonstrate, now it gives me other words that are similar to that.
- 04:04 So in this case, please notice again the drop-down arrow.
- 04:07 Click the drop-down arrow.
- 04:09 Now watch the word prove over on my text.
- 04:12 I'm about to hit Insert, there we go.
- 04:14 It's that fast,
- 04:15 you just have to know to get to the drop-down arrow to insert those.
- 04:18 All right, the last option over there on the proofing section is the Word Count.
- 04:22 When I activate that, it tells me how many pages, words, characters,
- 04:26 paragraphs, lines.
- 04:27 It's just a nice little check.
- 04:28 If you're writing something that has to be under 500 words,
- 04:31 this would help you know how many words you're at.
- 04:33 All right, please use those.
- 04:35 It'll help you a lot, thank you.
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