Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style.

Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated January 12, 2022)

If you use styles in your documents, chances are pretty good that you will end up defining styles for things such as tables, illustrations, and the like. There is also a good chance that you will want these types of paragraphs to be skipped when doing a grammar- or spell-check. You can ensure this by doing the following:

Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
Click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Styles group. Word displays the Styles task pane.
In the list of styles shown, hover the mouse pointer over the name of the style you want to alter. A drop-down arrow should appear at the right side of the style name.
Click the drop-down arrow and choose Modify. Word displays the Modify Style dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Modify Style dialog box.

Click on Format and select Language from the pull-down list. Word displays the Language dialog box. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The Language dialog box.

Make sure the Do Not Check Spelling or Grammar check box is selected.
Click on OK.
Click on OK to close the Modify Style dialog box.
To change other styles, repeat steps 3 through 8.
When you are done, click on Close.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13048) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Turning Off a Dictionary for a Style.

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

Grabbing the Second-to-Last Value in a Column

Need to get at the next-to-last value in a column, regardless of how many cells are used within that column? This tip ...

Discover More

Inserting Different Dashes

Dashes have a lot of different uses in writing. Word supports three types of dashes, as discussed in this tip.

Discover More

Getting Rid of Mail Merge Section Breaks

When you create a group of documents from a merge file, Word normally inserts section breaks between iterations of the ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Automatically Update Document Styles Setting

Templates and styles are a great way to apply formatting consistently within and across documents. A couple of the ...

Discover More

Putting Style Names Next to Paragraphs on a Printout

If you use styles to format your document, you might want a way to print the document and show, to the left of each ...

Discover More

Deleting Styles

As documents evolve, so do your needs for various styles. You may create new ones and, invariably, old ones need to be ...

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 8 + 2?

2014-04-07 01:11:24

K.Vee.Shanker.

Useful Tip indeed! Thanks.

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.