To do this, click the "Inspector" button at the top of the Pages window, and then click the "Text" section in the inspector (this looks like a capital "T"). There is no option to set a specific paragraph or section as a specific language, but this will allow you to spell check the document in a different language.Īpple's Pages program is a little more complex, and has options to support individual sections of text being in a different language. With the checker open, choose the desired language you would like to use from the menu at the bottom of the window. To do this, go to the Edit menu and choose "Show Spelling and Grammar" from the "Spelling and Grammar" submenu. In TextEdit, you have the option to run a spell check session in a different language. Luckily, several common word-processing programs have these settings: The problem with changing this setting is it is global and therefore will not allow you to specify a specific document or text selection to be identified as a different language. Pages offers language options in the Inspector window. While you can select a specific language here, if you leave it as "Automatic by Language" then when you change localization settings such as the system language or other program-specific language setting then the spell checker will automatically adjust to that preference. To get to the settings for the system spell checker, go to the "Language & Text" system preferences and choose the desired language in the "Spelling" menu in the Text tab. The OS X spell checker will be used for programs like Safari and TextEdit, which do not include their own spell check dictionaries and options. In addition, some programs offer options to have specific selections of text be set to a given language. To overcome this problem, you can either temporarily change the system-wide spell check options, or do this for individual applications' spell check settings either globally or for a specific spell check session. TextEdit's Language chooser is in the spell checker.
Though this is convenient, there may be times when in typing documents you will need to use phrases or paragraphs in different languages, and having the spell checker in one language will not work.
The language setting will not only set the system's display language, but also set up the various spell checkers used in word-processing programs like TextEdit, Pages, and Safari. This will set the system-wide spell checker to the desired language, and also cue other applications such as Microsoft Office to set their languages accordingly at installation time, if supported. When you initially set up your Mac, you will be asked to select one of several supported languages as the default language to use.