Microsoft Outlook does not correctly spellcheck flavor when in the subject field.

Recently I was sending an email using Microsoft Outlook and to my surprise, the incorrect spelling flavor was not picked up as a spelling error. In fact the correct spelling flavour was marked as a spelling error in the subject field.

If typing flavour in the body of the email message the spelling was correctly handled as the correct spelling for Australia and flavor was correctly marked as a spelling error.

It really is hard to believe after so many decades of Microsoft Outlook being available, there's still errors in the code. In this case the spelling language was set to Australian English. The body of the message is spellchecked correctly, but the subject field is checking the text entered against American English.

To get around this issue and check the spelling correctly, copy the subject text into the body of the email, check the text is spelt correctly, then cut and paste the text into the subject field. That way you know you're getting the text spellchecked using the selected language.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.

Is the spelling Afterall or After all?

Recently, whilst checking a Microsoft Word document, the word Afterall with the initial letter capitalised did not come up as a spelling error, whereas afterall without the initial capital, was shown as a spelling error. How could this be?

The compound word afterall is a common misspelling of after all. The Australian Oxford dictionary confirms the spelling is after all.

A check of Google for sites in Australia (sites ending in .au) returns 321,000 results for afterall and 19.6 million results for after all, which shows most people spell the word correctly. So why isn't Microsoft Word marking the word Afterall as a spelling error?

It may simply be the Microsoft Word dictionary is in error. Another possible reason is a check of the internet shows Afterall is used by a number of organisations as part of their name. As part of an organisation's name, Afterall can be capitalised.

In this situation, how the word Afterall is being used, is after all the only way to know if the word should be capitalised or not. If Afterall is not part of an organisation's name, it is a spelling error.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au

The preferred Australian English spelling.