On the trial and working through tutorial I imported a document. Import worked fine but the spell checker flagged up: realized,spilled and haulier as incorrect spelling. I have it set to English in options. have I missed something as it would be strange to have a spell checker that cannot spell in a writing program.
Just to ask: have you defined your chosen language as U.S. English or British English? (I’m working on my Mac at the moment, but I’m pretty certain that Windows has these options.) In British English, “realised” is still the preferred spelling, as is “spilt” (probably - the pendulum may be swinging away from that one); I don’t know about “haulier”.
N.B. This may not be the reason for your issue.
Hello Hugh,
Yes I can confirm that it is set to English (United Kingdom) and the three words mentioned are correct as of the 2012 Collins English dictionary and also Dictionary.com (Spilt and spilled both in use as past tense of spill.) which I unfortunately rely on as my spelling is not good. (Working on it.)
Firstly, “spull chicker”.
heehee
Computer spell checkers cannot hope to have all the words in the English language, or even the all the words a reasonably literate person might use.
I will say this though: No matter what the dictionaries might say, “realised” and “spilt” are the British spellings. “Haulier” is correct though, so I don’t know what’s up with that.
I would point out, however, that unless someone can tell me otherwise, dictionary.com is an American English dictionary, and Collins aims to cover all of English (albeit that it does usually try and flag when something is purely US spelling)
Hello pigfender,
Thanks for that. Just out of interest, after looking all over the internet its seems most accept ‘realize’ as an American spelling of ‘realise’. Collins and Oxford dictionary both spell it ‘realize’ and it seems most think it is a recent spelling adopted from the American dictionary. I have on my lap a 1936 Odhams press Dictionary of the English language, it contains no American versions of any other words… but it has only ‘realize’ there is no realise in it.
Many American words with “z” in them (“realize”, “organize”, synthesize" etc.) have until quite recently always been spelled with “s” in UK English – the spell checker in Safari on my Mac has just tried to correct my spelling in the line above. “z” seems to be slightly alien to the UK spelling of a lot of words, although I suspect usage is changing that and that’s why some dictionaries offer both alternatives. Personally I wouldn’t spell “spilt” as “spilled”, but “haulier” – no idea.