Spell check in Google Docs

Let’s be honest, writing a good document is a tough job. Whether you are writing a formal or informal doc, or building a resume, writing good-quality content is a substantial challenge. Yes, you can use tools like GPT but the AI-generated articles all look and sound the same, the originality of thoughts is missing. If jolting down our original thoughts is not enough, we also have to worry about spelling, punctuation, and grammar rules. To add to our misery, every language like English has its own set of Grammar and punctuation rules which are tough to remember.

In short, we can say that to impress your manager, or clients you need a document to be well-crafted, correctly spelt & punctuated with no zero grammar errors.

If you use Google Docs, there is an in-built tool for spell check and Grammar check.

How to enable/disable spell check in Google Doc?

Spell check and Grammar check are enabled by default in any new Google Doc. You can verify this by following the below steps :

1. Click on the Tools option in the top menu bar.
2. It will open up a dropdown in which the very first item is Spelling and Grammar.
3. On Hovering over this option another dropdown menu should open up to the right. Here you can see a few options like Show spelling suggestions and Show grammar suggestions
4. If these options have check mark in front of them that means they are enabled. You can click on the first option to enable Show spelling suggestions and Show grammar suggestions together if it’s not enabled in your case.
5. You click again to disable them.
6. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts (command + option + X on Mac and ctrl + shift + X on Windows) to enable and disable the tool. See the below screenshots.

Enable/Disable Spell check in Google Doc

How to choose a language for your Google Doc?

If you are writing a document in a different language than English, Google Docs can auto-detect that language and tune the spelling and grammar check for that language. You can also explicitly choose your language by following these steps :

1. Click on the "File" tab from the top menu.
2. Hover your cursor over the "Language" option. (3rd option from the end)
3. It will open up a dropdown to the right. Select your preferred language from the list.
4. Now, Google Docs knows which language to use for showing spelling and grammar suggestions.

Select your preferred language in Google Doc

How to work with the Spell Check and Grammar Check tool in Google Docs?

Alright, now that we have spelling and grammar check enabled and preferred language selected we can already see the tool in action. You’ll notice red wavy lines underneath the misspelled words. You can click over them to get suggestions, feel free to pick the one that suits your sentence best. Similarly, the tool also underlines the grammatically incorrect sentences, bad punctuation in your doc. You can hover over those underlines and accept one of the suggestions.

Spelling and Grammar correction in Google Doc

The Spelling and Grammar Suggestion tool is good for basic formatting and polishing of your doc. But in order to write even better documents that leave an impression on the reader you should check our other blog on the best tools that you can leverage for your everyday writing.