Building Slicker Documents Faster

Disabling or Hiding Automatic Spelling and Grammar Checking

Automatic spelling and grammar checking isn't everyone's cup of tea. Many people appreciate the way it catches typos and other inadvertent errors as they make them—without going through the trouble of a formal spelling or grammar check. Others find it distracting and want to turn it off immediately—especially the grammar checker, which has improved but is still far from perfect. Automatic spelling and grammar checking also slows down Word slightly.

If you prefer not to use automatic spell checking or automatic grammar checking, you can easily turn off one or both of them. Choose Tools, Options, and click the Spelling & Grammar tab in the dialog box that appears. Then, to disable automatic spell checking, clear the Check Spelling as You Type check box. To disable automatic grammar checking, clear the Check Grammar as You Type check box. When you're finished, click OK and your document is now free of red and green wavy lines.

Checking Spelling Through the Spelling and Grammar Dialog Box In addition to the streamlined spelling and grammar tools Word makes available through the shortcut menu, Word provides a powerful spelling- and grammar-checking dialog box that gives you even more options for fixing your current document—and improving the way you check future documents. To access it, click the Spelling and Grammar button on the Standard toolbar, or press F7.

A Closer Look at the Grammar Checker Word's grammar checker, like all contemporary grammar checkers, follows rules that identify potential writing problems. Word's grammar checker has gradually been refined; however, it still cannot "understand" your documents the way a friend, co-worker, or English teacher would, so it's best to have modest expectations. On a good day, the grammar checker might pleasantly surprise you—catching things you would never have noticed. On another day, it may flag many "errors" that are, in fact, not errors at all. Later, you'll learn to personalize the grammar checker to catch only the types of errors you actually make, with fewer false alarms.

AutoCorrect: Smarter Than Ever Unless you tell it to do otherwise, Word automatically corrects thousands of the most common spelling mistakes—even using suggestions built into the spell checker that it didn't use before. That's not all. Word also performs the following tasks: Makes sure that you start all your sentences with a capital letter Corrects words you inadvertently start with two capital letters Capitalizes days of the week, such as Tuesday Fixes things when you inadvertently press the Caps Lock key Replaces character strings such as (c) with symbols such as © Replaces Internet "smileys" such as :) with Wingding symbols such as A

Working with Smart Tags

What if a word processor could automatically tag certain phrases as belonging to specific categories, and give you tools for using that text in new ways? For example, what if your document recognized when you typed a date, and offered to schedule a meeting for you? What if it recognized a name and provided commands for adding that name to your Outlook contact list, or for sending an email to that individual? With Word 2003's Smart Tags feature, you can do this, and far more.

Why Styles Are So Valuable

Styles are one of Word's most powerful time-savers, for five important reasons.

First, styles can dramatically reduce the time it takes to format a document—often by 90% or more. Second, styles can help you make sure that all your documents look consistent, with very little effort on your part. Third, if you export your Word document to a desktop publishing program, you can generally use Word styles to help automate the work done in that program. Fourth, if you need to change the way your styled document looks, you need to change only a few styles, not hundreds of manual formats.

Changing Styles

In the past few pages, you've learned how to create new styles. However, you can also make changes in existing styles. If you want to make systematic changes in a style, you can use the Modify Style dialog box. If you want to make simple changes to a style, it's easier to use the Styles and Formatting task pane.

Managing Styles Before you start accumulating new and changed styles, give a little thought to how you'll manage them. Managing styles involves the following: Deciding which styles should be placed in templates, and organizing those styles in the templates associated with specific kinds of work Naming styles so that you and your colleagues understand their purpose Occasionally moving styles or deleting styles you no longer use You can perform some management tasks in the Style dialog boxes you've already studied. For other tasks, such as moving styles between templates, you use the Organizer, described later in this chapter. How to Choose Style Names Spend a few moments thinking about how to name your styles. Keep the following tips in mind: Name your styles based on their function, not their appearance. Don't name a style Arial 48 Bold; what if you decide to change its appearance someday? Rather, name it based on how you expect to use it—for example, Front Page Headline. (This is one of the key disadvantages of simply using Word 2003's list of formats instead of styles—and one reason most sophisticated users will continue to work with styles instead.) Keep your style names as consistent as possible. Imagine that you use a set of styles for only projects involving Omega Corp. Consider starting each style name with O. That way, they'll all be listed together—and you'll be less likely to inadvertently use them in projects that don't involve Omega. The catch with using descriptive style names is that they could also become quite wordy. This can become problematic if you also like to type your style names in the Style box to select them. It takes too long to type a long name, and if you make a mistake, Word creates a new style, which isn't what you want to happen. You can have it both ways. Use aliases. An alias is an abbreviated style name that Word recognizes in place of the full style name. For example, if you have a style named Major Headline, you might want to use the alias MH. You can create an alias from either the New Style or the Modify Style dialog box. Type the style's full name, add a comma, and then type your alias. For example, to create the style Document Summary and assign the alias DS at the same time, enter Document Summary,DS Both the full name and the alias appear in the Style box, but you can select the style by typing only the alias.