Spellcheck a Document

AbiWord comes with built-in spellchecking capabilities. The spellcheck feature checks the spelling of words in a text document. You will find this particularly valuable for catching spelling mistakes.

Enable the Auto Spellcheck Feature

AbiWord's Auto Spellcheck feature automatically highlights misspelled words as you type. Let's make sure that this is enabled on your system by following these few basic steps:

Select Tools located on the Menu bar

Select Spelling

Verify that there is a check next to Auto Spellcheck

Now that you've enabled the Auto Spellcheck feature, let's test it out by following a few simple instructions:

Open the document you created in the Lesson 1 of this tutorial
If you've misspelled any words in this document, they will appear with a red wavy underline.

Next, let's learn how to use Spellcheck to revise your document.

Check a Document For Spelling Errors

Let's check your document for spelling errors by using the Spellcheck your document button by following these few easy steps:

Type some additional text into your document
Select the Spellcheck your document button
If you misspelled any words, the Spelling dialog appears. The sentence containing the misspelled word is displayed with the misspelled word highlighted in red in the Not in dictionary: dialog. The Change to: dialog shows AbiWord's recommendation for an alternative spelling. The Suggests: window shows more options to replace the misspelled word, including the current recommendation.
Select a word in Suggestions: list
Note: You can also manually change the spelling by typing a word into the Change To: box.
Select Change to change the highlighted word in the Not in dictionary: dialog to the word displayed in the Change to: dialog
When the spellcheck is complete, the message "The spelling check is complete" appears.
Select OK

Set Spellchecking Options

The Spelling Options feature allows you to determine settings regarding how Spellcheck works. For instance, you can have spellcheck inspect for spelling errors as you type and/or ignore certain classes of words, e.g., uppercase, words with numbers, and Internet and file addresses. In future versions of AbiWord, we hope to give you the ability to hide spelling errors in the document, have the spellchecker always suggest corrections, choose a custom dictionary, and change the specific words that the spellcheck ignores.

Let's change some of the preset spelling options by following a few basic instructions:

Open the document you created earlier in this lesson
Type a sentence incorporating a number in one of your words
For example, "Three men went to the r0deo."
Select Tools located on the Menu bar
Select Spelling
Select Spelling Options
Deselect Ignore words with numbers
Select the Save button
Select the OK button
Select the Spellcheck your document button

The Spelling dialog appears indicating any spelling errors you may have made. For instance, the word "r0deo" in the example sentence provided above is spelled incorrectly. Therefore, the Not in dicationary dialog highlights this word in red and the Change to: dialog suggests that it be changed to "rodeo."

Select the Change button
A dialog with the message "The spelling check is complete" appears.

Other Spelling dialog features:

Ignore: By selecting this button, the spellchecker leaves the detected misspelled word spelled as it is.
Ignore all: Like the Ignore button, this button leaves the current word as it is, but it also sets the spellchecker to pass over all further words spelled the same way. This is useful if, for example, you frequently use a personal name in a document. If you select Ignore All on a correctly spelled version of the name, the spellchecker will not flag correctly spelled instances, but will warn you if you have spelled the name incorrectly.
Add: If you select this button, AbiWord will add the current word to your custom dictionary. This means that the current word will not be marked as misspelled in any of your documents. This function is useful for technical terms that you use repeatedly.
Change All: This option changes all occurrences of the word highlighted in the Not in dictionary: dialog to the word or words displayed in the Change to: dialog. This is useful if, for example, you repeatedly type 'the' as 'teh.'
Cancel: If you select this button, the Spellcheck dialog closes.

You now know how to not only check for spelling errors in your document, but you can also enable the Auto Spellcheck feature as well as set your spellcheck options. If you'd like to learn how to print your document, select Next. If you'd like to go to a different section within this lesson or to a new lesson, choose from one of the options in the Navigation bar.