Turning Off the Check for Repeated Words

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 18, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021

Marianne types Inspector General interviews and very often people stammer, repeating the same word a few times. This causes the 'delete repeated word' window to pop up. Marianne tried turning off spell checking to fix the problem, but that obviously caused other problems. She wonders if there is a way to turn off checking for repeated words without turning off spell check.

The answer isn't to turn off spell checking altogether, but instead to modify how spell check does its work. Follow these steps:

Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
Click Proofing at the left side of the screen. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Proofing options of the Word Options dialog box.

Clear the Flag Repeated Words check box.
Click OK.

Not being an interview typist (particularly for the Inspector General) myself, there is another way that may be acceptable: Just change how you type the duplicate words. For instance, instead of typing "yes yes" (which would cause the duplicate-word flag to appear on the second "yes"), you could type "yes, yes" or "yes; yes" or place some other sort of punctuation or dash between the repeated words. This causes Word to not treat them as repeats; that only occurs if you repeat the words with no intervening punctuation.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10121) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Creating Superscript and Subscript Buttons

Want a quick way to apply superscript and subscript to selected text within a cell? This tip shows how the formatting can ...

Discover More

Moving Cell Borders when Sorting

Sort your data and you may be surprised at what Excel does to your formatting. (Some formatting may be moved in the sort ...

Discover More

Counting Internal Links

Word allows you to easily add hyperlinks to your documents. These links can be to either a bookmark within your document ...

Discover More

The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Spell Check Misses Misspelled Words

If you do a spelling check and notice that Word doesn't catch a word that you know is misspelled, it is easy to get ...

Discover More

Making Ignore All Work for a Document on All Systems

When you tell Word's spell checker to ignore all instances of a misspelling, you may expect that the misspelling will be ...

Discover More

Symbols in Words Added to the Dictionary

Adding special characters to otherwise normal words, such as a company name, may be necessary. However, this could affect ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is six minus 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.