Operation Manual

Using built-in language tools
Writer provides some tools that make your work easier if you mix multiple languages within the
same document or if you write documents in various languages.
The main advantage of changing the language for a text selection is that you can then use the
correct dictionaries to check spelling and apply the localized versions of Autocorrect replacement
tables, thesaurus, and hyphenation rules.
You can also set the language for a paragraph or a group of characters as None (Do not check
spelling). This option is especially useful when you insert text such as web addresses or
programming language snippets that you do not want to check for spelling.
Specifying the language in character and paragraph styles is the preferred method, because styles
allow a greater level of control and make changing the language much faster. On the Font tab of
the Paragraph Styles dialog, you can specify that certain paragraphs be checked in a language
that is different from the language of the rest of the document. See Chapter 7, Working with Styles,
in the Writer Guide for information on how to manage the language settings of a style.
You can also set the language for the whole document, for individual paragraphs, or even for
individual words and characters, from Tools > Language on the menu bar.
Another way to change the language of a whole document is to use Tools > Options > Language
Settings > Languages. In the Default languages for documents section, you can choose a
different language for all the text that is not explicitly marked as a different language.
The spelling checker works only for those languages in the list that have the symbol next to
them. If you do not see the symbol next to your preferred language, you can install the additional
dictionary using Tools > Languages > More dictionaries online.
The language used for checking spelling is also shown in the status bar, next to the page style in
use.
Using AutoCorrect
Writer’s AutoCorrect function has a long list of common misspellings and typing errors, which it
corrects automatically. For example, “hte” will be changed to “the”.
AutoCorrect is turned on when Writer is installed. To turn it off, uncheck Format > AutoCorrect >
While Typing.
Choose Tools > AutoCorrect Options to open the AutoCorrect dialog. There you can define
which strings of text are corrected and how. In most cases, the defaults are fine.
To stop Writer replacing a specific spelling, go to the Replace tab, highlight the word pair, and click
Delete.
To add a new spelling to the list, type it into the Replace and With boxes on the Replace tab, and
click New.
See the different tabs of the dialog for the wide variety of other options available to fine-tune
AutoCorrect.
Tip
AutoCorrect can be used as a quick way to insert special characters. For example,
(c) will be changed to ©. You can add your own special characters.
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