What variants of English are supported by the Proofing Tools?
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Component
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English(US)
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English(UK)
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English(Australia)
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English(Canada)
|
English(Ireland)
|
|
Spell-checker
|
Y
|
Y
|
Y
Has its own lexicon file mssp3ena.lex
|
Since Office 2000
|
New download for Office XP.
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/ptk.aspx
Someone has commented that this is incorrectly labeled:
it’s actually Gaelic and not English. UPDATE: This has now been corrected to Gaeilge (Ireland).
|
|
Thesaurus
|
Y
|
Y
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Uses English(UK) file
|
|
|
|
Grammar-checker
|
The grammar-checker treats them all the same but
recognizes some usage differences such as verbs with mass nouns.
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Hyphenation
|
No known difference
|
|
AutoCorrect
|
Y
|
Y
|
Y
|
Y
|
|
Other English locales such as New
Zealand, South Africa,
Singapore
are supported indirectly by the other tools. If someone were to create (for
example) a compatible spell-checker or supplemental lexicon for English(New Zealand),
then Word would use that.
The spelling and grammar files are identical across US, UK, Canada
and Australia,
except that there is supplemental speller lexicon file for Australian English: mssp3ena.lex.
I don’t want English(US) spell-checking. How do I get rid of it?
You can’t get rid of the English(US)
spell-checker as it shares the same files as English(UK), English (Canada) and English (Australia).
If Office has been installed on a machine that hasn’t
been properly configured as another language, then it assumes English(US). Once Office has been installed and documents
created, it becomes harder to correct as the initial Windows setting is picked
up by Office and your documents.
For those who prefer English (UK) make sure the following
settings are correct:
1. Keyboard
input language (Control Panel > Regional & Language Options >
Languages > Details). The keyboard language overrides some document
settings.
2. Office
Language Settings (Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Tools >
Microsoft Office Language Settings)
3. Word
document default (Tools > Language > Set Language : Default)
4. Word
document styles (each may have its own language setting). The language tag is
found under the Format properties for each style.
Further notes:
- The
user locale setting used for specifying date, currency and measurement
unit preferences has no impact on the spell-checker language.
- Text
pasted or imported from other documents may have a language tag that
differs from your document default. To re-tag such text, select it and
apply the preferred language via Tools > Language > Set Language.
These settings apply for English(Australia)
and other locales.
My text is marked as English(UK)
but it doesn’t flag spellings like organization.
It may come as a surprise to many, but most authoritative UK
English dictionaries prefer the -z- spelling for many words, and have done so
for decades. English(US) only allows ‑z- spellings, but other countries
allow -s- & -z- interchangeably except: where a particular spelling is
defined for a specific entity: e.g. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The
Macquarie Dictionary also lists -z- spellings as permissible alternates. Some institutions or texts may have stylistic preferences for one over the other.
In theory you could add all the spellings you don’t
like to an exclude dictionary, but there are many thousands of such words in
many forms, e.g.:
Organize, organized, organizing, organizer, organizers,
organization, organizations, organizational, organization’s.
Some words only have ‑s- forms e.g. promise, premise,
chemise, compromise, merchandise, franchise, enterprise, disguise, exercise,
surmise, surprise.
See these links for more background on the ise/ize (and yse/yze) issue:
Minor edits: 2005-04-12