Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 1, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
Word includes a feature that checks up on the spelling and grammar in your document as you type. You've seen the results—the red and green squiggly underlines that mark spelling and grammar errors that you may want to correct as you are typing.
The error marking can be bothersome to some people. These people would rather differentiate between the creative phase of writing and the more manual phase of editing and polishing the document. To these people the squiggly underlines are distracting. If you want to turn off the green squiggly underlines, you can follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Proofing options of the Word Options dialog box.
Any existing green squiggly underlines should disappear. In order to use Word's grammar checking feature you will now explicitly need to explicitly start the process by choosing the proper option from the Proofing group on the Review tab of the ribbon.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12377) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Hiding Grammar Errors.
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