how to add custom dictionary in word 2016

You can even include formatted text (italics, bold) if you choose, as in the following example.

Simply type in the term you’d like to replace under ‘Replace:’ and the final text under ‘With:’. You will now see a list of words that will be identified and replaced with a different term, including my example of enertotoxin.Īdding terms to this list is easy. You can now click the “AutoCorrect Options” button. When the Word Options window pops up, choose Proofing in the sidebar. To reach the AutoCorrect options, click on File, then Options.

It was not a huge issue to fix the spelling during the spellcheck (I had added enterotoxin to my custom dictionary), but I eventually changed the AutoCorrect settings to automatically correct my mistake. What if you tend to spell something wrong fairly often, and you are tired of having to change it? Or what if you are constantly typing a particularly long and troublesome term, and you would love to create a shortcut? You can make use of Word’s AutoCorrect function to help out.įor example, I worked with bacterial protein toxins in the past, and I would frequently write enertotoxin instead of enterotoxin.

Please note that you will have to add plural forms (e.g, adhesins) or verb conjugations separately.Īdding terms to the dictionary is useful for words that you have spelled correctly but may not be recognized by Word. Additionally, if you misspell the specialized term in the future, it will be underlined and caught during spellcheck (as before), but you will not be tempted to ignore the false-positive spelling errors that arise because the dictionary simply did not recognize a correctly spelled term. Simply right-click on a term that is underlined in red and choose “Add to Dictionary.” From now on, that word will be considered correctly spelled. In general, the easiest option is to add that word to your spelling dictionary. If you have to use a troublesome phrase like this, what should you do? For many cases, Word will automatically correct these words to a term in the dictionary, so be particularly careful to proofread your text. These “almost” words, such as proteins known as adhesins (close to adhesions) or the species name Vibrio cholerae (like cholera, the disease cause by this bacterium), can be particularly troublesome. Some scientific jargon is very different from any English word, but there are also tricky terms that look nearly identical to an English word. Spelling errors are common in scientific manuscripts because of the large number of non-standard terms that are frequently used.

In this post, we’re offering another way to let Microsoft Word help you with your scientific manuscript: customizing your spelling dictionary and AutoCorrect options. In another article, we described a way to use the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word to search your manuscript for inconsistencies with formatting, spelling, and terminology.

How to add custom dictionary in word 2016