If you would like to use Microsoft Word effectively, you will need to know the basic grammar to a certain extent. Microsoft Word will warn you as and when you make a grammatical or spelling error in typing a document. It will highlight some of the areas of your document which requires additional focus and this will enable you to effectively proofread the document. Microsoft Word can be used as a grammar checker by following the steps given below:
- The first step is to open a new Microsoft Word document and select the options from the tools menu. Select the tab named spelling and grammar from the window that comes up.
- Then, look for the grammar section at the bottom segment of the window. Check the box that tells check grammar as you type. Then, start typing the document. Now you can find Microsoft Word providing underline in any possible grammatical errors as you are typing.
- The sentences or words underlined in green color represents grammatical error and in red color represents spelling errors. Look for the sentences with green wavy lines under it and right click at that sentence.
- When you right click on that sentence, you will get a list of options from where you can see the options like grammar, ignore once, look up, about this sentence, cut, copy and paste. From the menu can also select the option called ‘ignore once’ and if you select this option, word will temporarily ignore that mistake. Sometimes, Microsoft Word will provide suggestion at the right click stage itself. But, here it does not give any suggestion or if it gives a suggestion like fragment, you can select the option called ‘about this sentence’, by selecting this option word will open a help window with an explanation for the grammatical error.
- If you select the grammar option, it will open a window with wrongly typed sentence in the top and at the bottom of the window Microsoft Word will offer you suggestions for modifying the sentence or it will also offer tip for revising the sentence fragment.
- Now you can replace the sentence typed by you with the suggestion given by Microsoft Word, by selecting the change option from the window. Here, you can also select another option called ‘ignore once’. This will make Microsoft Word to ignore the mistake for the time being.
- In the grammar window, you can also select the option called explain, where the help window of Microsoft Word will explain you the mistake in the sentence with the help of which you can change the sentence accordingly.
- If you click the open book icon at the bottom of Microsoft Word (i.e.) in the status bar, it will highlight the spelling and grammar errors if any in your document. Repeatedly clicking the icon will enable you to cycle through all the feasible errors in the document.
The spelling and grammar checking option of Microsoft Word will enable you to prepare a document free from both spelling and grammatical errors.