Spell Check Your Paper

Every year, I get dozens of papers with lots of squiggly red lines. It drives me crazy!

So, just in case you have not yet learned this important lesson, here it is:

• When Google suspects that you have misspelled a word, it puts a squiggly red line beneath the word that it thinks you have misspelled.
• And when Google suspects that that you have made a grammar (or punctuation) error, it underlines the questionable phrase with a squiggly blue line.

If you click on the underlined words, Google will suggest a correction. 95% of the time, Google is right. Occasionally, Google may not recognize a proper noun (or some such thing), and you can ignore the suggestion.

It's really not that hard to spell-check your work, which is why it annoys me so much when students fail to do it.

And here are a few more tips:

• If you click on a misspelled word, you'll get a slightly different menu of options depending on whether you left-click or right-click. Experiment, to see which menu you like best.
• You can either correct misspelling as you go, or you can do it all at once. To do it all at once, go to
  • Tools
    • Spelling and Grammar
      • Spelling and Grammar Check
• If you're not seeing any squiggly red lines, it could be that you're a perfect speller. The more likely explanation, however, is that Google's spell-check features have been turned off. To turn them back on again, go to
  • Tools
    • Spelling and Grammar
      • Click on "Show spelling suggestions" and "Show grammar suggestions". (Make sure that both these options are checked).
• You can see other auto-correct options by going to
  • Tools
    • Preferences

1	Run a spellcheck on your paper. Go to Tools, then Spelling and Grammar.
2	Congratulations! You're done with this lesson.