412 Chapter 14 Work with Slide Text
Checking Spelling and Choosing the Best Words
The AutoCorrect feature is very useful if you frequently type the same misspelling.
However, most misspellings are the result of erratic finger-positioning errors or memory
lapses. You can use two different methods to ensure that the words in your presentations
are spelled correctly in spite of these random occurrences.
● By default, PowerPoint’s spelling checker checks the spelling of the entire
presentation—all slides, outlines, notes pages, and handout pages—against its
built-in dictionary. To draw attention to words that are not in its dictionary and
that might be misspelled, PowerPoint underlines them with a red wavy underline.
You can right-click a word with a red wavy underline to display a menu with a list
of possible spellings. You can choose the correct spelling from the menu or tell
PowerPoint to ignore the word.
Tip To turn off this behind-the-scenes spell-checking, display the Backstage view,
and click Options to open the PowerPoint Options dialog box. In the left pane, click
Proofing, and then clear the Check Spelling As You Type check box.
● Instead of dealing with potential misspellings while you’re creating a presentation,
you can check the entire presentation in one session by clicking the Spelling button
in the Proofing group on the Review tab. PowerPoint then works its way through
the presentation, and if it encounters a word that is not in its dictionary, it displays
the Spelling dialog box. After you indicate how PowerPoint should deal with the
word, it moves on and displays the next word that is not in its dictionary, and so on.
The English-language version of Microsoft Office 2010 includes English, French, and
Spanish dictionaries. If you use a word or phrase from a different language, you can
mark it so that PowerPoint doesn’t flag it as a misspelling.
You cannot make changes to the main dictionary in PowerPoint, but you can add cor-
rectly spelled words that are flagged as misspellings to the PowerPoint supplemental
dictionary (called CUSTOM.DIC). You can also create and use custom dictionaries and
use dictionaries from other Microsoft programs.
PowerPoint can check your spelling, but it can’t alert you if you’re not using the best
word. Language is often contextual—the language you use in a presentation to mem-
bers of a club is different from the language you use in a business presentation. To make
sure you’re using words that best convey your meaning in any given context, you can use
the Thesaurus feature to look up alternative words, called synonyms, for a selected word.
Tip For many words, the quickest way to find a suitable synonym is to right-click the word,
and point to Synonyms. You can then either click one of the suggested words or click
Thesaurus to display the Research task pane.