I want to leave this thread open for comments so that anyone who has a suggestion can chime in.  As you will see from Caro Mio's post on yesterday's speech tag entry, you can "fool" Word sometimes by adding an extra space when you don't want it to automatically put a capital letter where you don't want one.   This works for a few other things too, so try to remember it if Word is not allowing you to punctuate correctly.

If you know of some other way to circumvent Word's all-knowing urge to "correct" your spelling, punctuation or grammar, please add it. :)

I'd love it if there was a slang update for Word, as you can't do common BTVS vernacular without all kinds of "spelling" errors.

Um, I think we've all noticed that you have to add contractions into Word's vocabulary list......at least, Office 2000's version doesn't have them.

Ah, that brings up a question.....Anyone using a newer version and noticing improvements?

Word sucks, Caro.  We're all being punished for abandoning Word Perfect. 

Just a heads up for writers.  Word doesn't know when to use its or it's, so it marks them all as being wrong.  Beyond irksome.

Yeah, the "its" thing bugs me all the time! Word is stupid.

Actually, the "its" thing doesn't bother me that much because all it does (on mine) is flag it for me.  As long as Word doesn't do one of its automatic changes, I'm fine with it flagging things that its programming tells it are wrong.  Sometimes it's right and I catch a typo I might have otherwise missed. (My little finger loves making apostophes - puts them everywhere.lol) And, if it's wrong, I just ignore it.  It's possible to go into "preferences" and turn off almost all the automatic formatting and correcting if you really don't want it, but I find it is sometimes useful to have it mark things for me - then I can make the decision to change or not.

It's just like using a calculator for math - if you don't know your times tables, etc, you won't have a clue if you hit the wrong button and your answer is totally off the mark.  These tools that we have become so accustomed to depending upon are only good if we are capable of doing the same things ourselves and therefore able to pick up on mistakes.  They are wonderful time-saving devices, but no substitute for understanding the underlying subject matter.

I have a commercial copy of Office 2003, so no clue if this is how it works on other versions, but if I go to the Tools menu, there's a link called AutoCorrect.  Click on that and you can turn off whatever's pissing you off.

Yep, that too. That might be all you have to do to turn off the correcting feature - I might be thinking about the auto formatting and stuff like that. I know you have to go into Preferences for something or other. Thanks!

Whining until the department's tech guy explained it to me was a must when almost everything I write either has stuff like 'taphonomy,' 'paleobehaviors,' and 'ecophenotypy' or 'suckage,' 'slayage,' and 'Mbwogan demon' in it.  I don't know which batch got more maimed by AutoCorrect, my paleontology papers or my fanfic.

Oh, and my copy can tell its and it's apart, so I guess they're trying to get better.

I use MSWord...don't really have much of a choice. What irks the daylights out of me is that it will flag everything its not familiar with so it always tries to change Xander to dander or Anya to Anaya or Sunnydale to Sunnyville or something of the like.

A lot of the filters are off but I actually do need to recheck some of them as I'm a partial dyslexic (I reverse the same groupings of letters constantly whereas with regular dyslexia, its not a set grouping but more widespread) and I know I make poor Wendy (Fetching Mad Scientist) possibly look at what I've written and probably shake her head in sadness.

Are there any other programs out there with better filters and checks and such that can be downloaded or bought. I'd like to see what else is out there other than MSWord.

Well, Word can learn new words, so that's not really a problem. :shrug: It's not like you can expect any spell-checking software to know ever NAME there is. Mine (2003) doesn't have the its, it's problem either. I'd have to check the 2000 version, but I have an idea - did you update it? You can update Office just like Windows itself on the Microsoft website. Like I said, I'm not sure about the its, it's thing, but I know for a fact that several of the updates in between the CD version and the current version have to do with spellcheck. Might be woth a try.

I've got a small business 2003 version.  (And what's with the 14 different versions anyway?)  Updating is a good idea. 

Updating any software is usually a good idea - in a perfect world, every upgrade will have removed some of the irritating problems that were found in previous versions.  My version (and I have no idea what it is) only flags what it thinks are misspelled words (like Xander, Anya, faryl, etc) with a squiggley line (red) and possible grammar/punctuation issues with a squiggley green line. Easy to ignore.  Or, you can tell it to learn the word and then it shouldn't flag it anymore.

I wish it would offer more than two color options on track changes, so that the beta's comments would be in a different color than the changes. Right now, it offers one color for things to be deleted, and a second one for the new stuff, so it treats lengthy explanation just like they were actual corrections.  Not a big deal, I guess - but I'd like it better if I could put comments in a neutral color.  *hello? MS are you listening?*

*snicker* Wait till you see Office 2007. Not only is it pretty clear that MS didn't listen to anyone, you'll also wonder what the hell they are smoking. Cos completely revamping the desingn/menu/handeling of a product that has been around for a decade? Suuuure, that makes sense. Never mind the people who have been using it for years and will have to completely re-learn everything. (Ask my boss, I actually screamed in fury when I saw it the first time.)

Ugh! I've seen the 2007 version and it sucks monkies! I'm not looking forward to it.

Ok, so here is a dumb question...how do I make my Word 'learn' the words so it quits flagging them constantly?

When a word you want Word to recognize comes up during a spell check, there is an "Add" or "Add to Dictionary" button that is one of the options.  Click that and it'll stop flagging the word.

I have to guess a bit here, cos I don't have an english Word. You right-click the word with the wobbly red line that you want Word to treat as correct. One of the options in the menu that opens, should be "Add to dictionary" or something with similar meaning. Click that, and your Word will stop marking the word in question as wrong. (This is language-specific; a word you added to the "English GB" dictionary will not automatically be added to the "English USA" one. If you switch languages from time to time, it's good to remember that.)

Yeah, I'm using Office 2000. It isn't updated, at least not by me....we're not uber-trustworthy of going to the MS site. (Nasty mankin!) I've been teaching it words from day one! At least it can't beep at me (my speakers are always off).

Since I'm always switching between english and french, my version of Office is a bit schizophrenic.  I'm never sure if the spelling of a word is french or if it is english...  Makes for a lot of fun for my betas...and for me.  And since I'm pretty much always mixed up between EN and FR, I can't spot the mistakes....

I use Word at times, but I mainly use OpenOffice, it's free and makes html and all that stuff.

Thank you wey ♥

my version of Office is a bit schizophrenic

I wish I could claim that problem for mine *sigh*