Writer Guide

The following options are available:
• For selection: select this option to apply a specified language to
the selected text (the selection can comprise only a few
characters or several paragraphs).
• For paragraph: select this option to apply the specified language
to the paragraph where the cursor is located.
• For all text: select this option to apply the specified language to
all the document.
An alternative way to the menu above that allows you to change the
language of a whole document is the use of Tools > Options >
Language Settings > Languages. In the Default languages for
documents section of the options dialog (Figure 77) you can choose a
different language for all the text.
Caution
Unlike the menu tool that applies to the individual document,
a change in the default language from the Options dialog is
a general change of settings of OOo and will therefore apply
to all the documents created in the future. If you want to
change the language for the current document only, be sure
to select the For the current document only option.
Spelling checking is available only for those languages in the list which
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.
Figure 77: Options available in the Languages settings
The language used for checking spelling is also shown in the status
bar, next to the page style in use.
You can also configure the language for a paragraph or a group of
characters as None. This option is particularly useful in the case
where you insert in the document text that you do not want to
spellcheck, such as web addresses or programming language snippets.
Chapter 3 Working with Text 91