In my previous article, I rant about MS Word’s spell check. And I think I should do the same for Grammar also.
The procedures for performing these two checks (spelling and grammar) are the same. Thus, if you know how to perform a spell check in Word, you can transform that knowledge to do grammar check in Word.
Meanwhile, below are the various ways you can check grammar in your MS Word document.
Option 1: Word’s Automatic Grammar Check
By default, MS Word underlines every grammatical error as you write your document. That’s the power of Automatic Grammar Check.
Word automatically monitor your grammar as you type. As soon as you goof, it will display a zigzag blue line under the grammar error. This is MS Word’s way of telling you that there’s a problem with your grammar. If the underline is red, it’s rather spelling error and not grammar.
Now how do you correct the grammar error in your Word document?
Correcting automatically detected grammar errors is very simple. Let me show you how:
- First, right-click the word or phrase or sentence that is underlined with the blue zigzag line. Word will pop-up a dialog box with suggestions to correct the grammar error. Like in the screenshot below, the grammar checker thinks that using the word “are” in this context is grammatically wrong. Simply because the noun “list” is singular and therefore must go with a singular verb “is” instead of “are”.
- If one of the suggestions is OK for you, click on it to correct the error.
- However, if the grammar is correct in the context used, select Ignore Once.
This is how you may correct grammar errors in Word.
However, if your Word document isn’t detecting errors automatically, it means the automatic grammar check is turned off and you need to turn it on for it to work.
How to turn on Automatic Grammar check in Word
If the Automatic Grammar Check is turned off, you can turn it on by obeying the steps below:
- Go to the File tab.
- Click on Options near the button right area of the File menu.
After clicking the Options, the Word Options window will appear.
- In the left pane of the Word Options window, click on Proofing.
- Click to check Mark grammar errors as you type.
- Click the OK button to save the settings.
NOTE: If you want to hide the grammar errors, you can do so by unchecking Mark grammar errors as you type. However, you can also hide potential grammar errors for the current document only so that MS Word will no longer underline any potential grammar error in the current document only. To do that, in the Exception for: drop-down, select Grammar check in Word, then select the checkbox labeled Hide grammar errors in this document only and then click on the OK button.
This is how you may turn on automatic grammar check in Microsoft Word.
If you now goof in your grammar, Word will underline the sentence or word with a blue zigzag line.
How to Manually Check Grammar Errors in MS Word
With the automatic grammar check, MS Word will automatically check your document for any potential grammar error.
However, you can also check for grammar errors manually by running the spelling and grammar checker tool. To do that, obey the below steps:
- Press F7 on the keyboard to launch the tool. Alternatively, go to Review>Proofing>Spelling & Gramma.
- If there are no grammar errors in your document, a pop-up will appear saying Spelling and Grammar check complete.
- However, if there are grammar errors in your document, MS Word will highlight them one after the other in a task pane. From this task pane, you can decide what to do with the grammar error – whether to change it with the suggested corrections or ignore it so that MS Word will no longer flag it as a grammar error.
To handle your grammar errors, there are some choices you must make. These choices are outlined below:
- Ignore once: This will ignore the current error and move on to the next one if any. Use this option if you think the grammar is correct in this context.
- Change: This will correct your grammar mistake with a suggested correction in the task pane. Use this option if you think the suggestion is correct.
Using a third-party add-on to check grammar in MS Word
Add-ins are third party programs that extend the capability of Microsoft Office Applications, and Grammarly is just one of them.
The Grammarly add-in for Microsoft Office allows you to check for spelling and grammar errors while writing Word documents. With Grammarly, you can check for grammar errors automatically as you write, and you can also do it manually if the document is already written.
If you don’t like Microsoft Word’s default grammar checker, Grammarly can be a very good alternative.
how to add Grammarly to word
Here’s how to set up Grammarly for free on Word:
- First, download the Grammarly add-in.
Click Here to download the Grammarly add-in.
You’ll be asked to log in before you can download the add-in. Enter your email and password to log in.
If you don’t have a Grammarly account yet, you need to create one by clicking this link: Don’t have an account?
After signing in or signing up, the Grammarly installer will begin to download.
If the download didn’t start, scroll down to the footer section, under the Products category, click on Grammarly for MS Office. This will lead you to the download page.
- Install the Add-in.
After downloading the installer, go to the downloads folder to install Grammarly.
See screenshot of how the Grammarly installer looks like:
Double click on the installer to begin the installation, and follow the setup instructions.
- Enable Grammarly in Word
After successfully installing Grammarly, launch your Word document; the Enable Grammarly button will appear. Select it to finalize your setup and activate Grammarly in your Word document.
Congratulations! You just secured a very powerful spelling and grammar checker for yourself.