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Capitalise word and get spelling mistake

Anonymous
2011-07-07T23:44:38+00:00

Hi Answer Community,

I've been coming across this issue in MS Word for some time now, and it's starting to get to me - I haven't found a 'setting' or personalisation option that stops this from happening, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

When I'm typing in Word in a bullet point and go back to change the capitalisation of the first letter of a word (happens with both lower case and upper case letters), it tells me that the remainder of the word I have just amended (i.e not including the letter I have just altered) is incorrectly spelt. I'm assuming that is because when I change the capitalisation of the letter, it treats the amended letter, and the rest of the word as separate 'words'.

As an example, I'll write the following sentence:

  • I am posting a question on Microsoft answers.

Then I go back to capitalise the word "answers" for whatever reason:

  • I am posting a question on Microsoft Answers.

MS Word will then place the red squiggly line underneath "nswers", without including the letter "A". Obviously if "nswers" were a word, it would be spelt wrong.

It is hard to get this problem to replicate on command, because it seems to only happen on bullet points, and when certain auto-format policies do not apply (i.e. capitalising the first word of a sentence, name, place etc).

For e.g. it just occured with the word word 'A-Frame' when I opened up my saved document and changed the capital 'F' to a lower case 'f' on existing text - however if I try to write the same word again in another bullet point, it won't do it.

If anyone has an idea about the formatting environment that brings this about, or if there is indeed a setting for auto-checking spelling in this instance please let me know.

I'm using MS Office 2007 on Windows Vista Business.

Cheers,

Stephen

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-08-27T05:06:31+00:00

    Each character can have a different language parameter applied (or no proofing). If part of the word is formatted with one language and the rest (or a single character) with another, then you are likely to get part or all of the word flagged as incorrectly spelled.

    For example type the word 'Setting', then change the language of the second 't' to another language (commonly there may be transitions between English US and English UK - particularly where material is copied from the internet).

    The first part of the word 'Set' is a valid word and so will be accepted. The second half of the word 'ting' is treated as two words 't' and 'ing', one with the changed language the other with the original language. 't' is not flagged as a single letter, but 'ing' is not a valid word and is thus flagged as incorrect.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-08-27T04:03:19+00:00

    So true.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2011-08-27T01:28:55+00:00

    I've been seeing this problem for some time (years).   It happens in any text. Today,  I changed design by adding "ed" at the end. Word marked "design" as a deletion and inserted "designed" after it.  When I ran spell check, it flagged  the "ed" as an error. Deleting and retyping "ed" didn't work.  Copying then deleting and pasting the whole word didn't work. So  I retyped the whole word and that fixed it.  At times, I've had to delete and retype the surrounding words.

    Today is the first time it's happened in  3 or 4 months. It hasn't happened often enough to really cause me to try to fix it.  So, I'm just writing to let you know that you are not alone.

    Pam

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-08-26T23:03:57+00:00

    Thanks Suzanne - I realise in the scheme of things this is a small-ish issue, but because I use Word all day as part of my profession I'm somewhat interested in why it happens and if there's any means to stop it from happening.

    Unfortunately the proofing mark (for incorrect spelling) doesn't dissappear because MS word is actually separating the first letter and the rest of the word as "word items" to assess, so refreshing or moving on doesn't remove the error markings.

    It still happens to me every day, so I'm still looking for any sort of answers if the community has any?

    In the mean time, I've just got to settle for re writing all the words that have this issue..

    Thanks,

    Steve

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  5. Suzanne S Barnhill 277.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2011-07-08T04:11:24+00:00

    In my experience (not to mention judging from some of the questions posted here), Word's proofing tools are increasingly flaky. What I have found, though, is that generally if you just ignore error markings such as the one you describe, they sort themselves out when the page is refreshed (by scrolling up and down, for example). Yes, it's annoying, and furthermore, it's puzzling, and inquiring minds want to know... but in the final analysis, sometimes you have to make up your mind not to sweat the small stuff!

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