Auto-correction

Many writers claim to loath this facility which changes their spellings and inserts unwanted words and date. However, in just a couple of minutes you can adjust the behaviour of Word to suit your typing and writing style.

The Auto-correction facility is accessed on the tools menu. You are then faced with four tabs

The AutoCorrect facility can eliminate many of the standard typos. I regularly jumble the three letters of the definite article but Word arranges them so that every combination is converted to ‘the’. The list provided traps most of the standard mistakes.

If you do not approve of the list provided you can change or delete the correction provided. But for clumsy typists like me, this saves me hours of editing.

AutoCorrect is not the same as spell checking. The former will change the word patterns in your list. But, if you are getting cross because the software changes a word, find it in the list and remove it. If, on the other hand, you constantly misspell a word or name, add it to the list and the jumble of letters you have entered will be converted to required spelling.

Used creatively, this allows you to enter an abbreviation and get Word to insert the full word. If you are writing a scientific paper or have given your fictional characters and places long names, add an abbreviation and let Word substitute the full text. So 'ROI' can be converted to 'Republic of Ireland' which is great until, of course, you actually want to type ROI!.

AutoText tries to spot the word you are typing and offers it to you the full word. To accept it just hit enter and the word drops into place. You can keep typing and the prompt will go away when you press the space bar to move to the next word.

I find the way Word prompts the date annoying and it never recognises what I am trying to insert. This is the place you can switch off this assistance. At the top of the AutoText tab you can clear the tick-box to stop it prompting for dates. Unfortunately, this turns off the useful features as well, so I put up with the prompting.

AutoFormat applies some logical changes to format the document as you type. So, if you have started a list, it will assume you want to add another line following it. (If it guesses wrong, inserting another line cancels this.) The items are fairly specific and self-explanatory. A few have facilities that are useful if you are importing text from other formats as they convert the markers into tidy text.

So, spend a few minutes looking at autocorrect and adjust it to suit the way you work. It will repay the investment.

Chas Jones 2005

Making the most of MS 'Word'

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