Language auto-detection does not work when you use the spelling and grammar checker in Word 2002 (290959)

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Word, when you check the spelling and grammar of text formatted with a mixture of languages, language auto-detection does not work as expected.

For example, when you check the spelling and grammar of the following sentence, where the text is a combination of Dutch (Belgian) and U.S. English, Word uses the Dutch (Belgian) language files rather than the U.S. English language files:

Het gezegde: "small is beautiful" is zeker niet van toepassing hier.

In this case, the English text, "small is beautiful," is flagged as incorrectly spelled because Word uses the Dutch (Belgian) dictionary to check the text.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs because Word evaluates text sentence by sentence to determine the language in use. If a sentence contains words from more than one language, or many scientific or other special terms, Word may apply the default language for the document, or it may apply the language of the preceding sentence.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, change the dictionary to the appropriate language.

To do this, select the dictionary that you want to use for the flagged word in the Dictionaries list in the Spelling & Grammar dialog box (press the F7 key).

MORE INFORMATION

If a word has a wavy line beneath it because it is in a different language, you can apply the correct language. To do this, right-click the word, point to Language on the shortcut menu, and then click Set Language to select the language that you want.

For additional information about international and multilingual features in Microsoft Word, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290926 General information resources about international and multilingual features in Word 2003 and Word 2002