Hiding Grammar Errors

Word includes a feature that checks up on the spelling and grammar in your document as you type. You've seen the results—the red and green squiggly underlines that mark spelling and grammar errors that you may want to correct as you are typing.

The error marking can be bothersome to some people. These people would rather differentiate between the creative phase of writing and the more manual phase of editing and polishing the document. To these people the squiggly underlines are distracting. If you want to turn off the green squiggly underlines, you can follow these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Spelling & Grammar tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Make sure the Hide Grammatical Errors in This Document check box is selected.
4. Click on OK.

If you are using Word 2007 you should follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options. Word displays the Word Options dialog box.
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Proofing. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Make sure the Mark Grammar Errors As You Type check box is cleared.
4. Click on OK.

Any existing green squiggly underlines should disappear. In order to use Word's grammar checking feature you will now explicitly need to explicitly start the process by choosing the proper option from the Tools menu.