My partner has all their misspelled words flagged while typing in Gmail but I don’t see to have the same feature. How can I enable spelling correction (and grammar help if possible) in Google Gmail?
So much of what happens nowadays in programs is a function of your Web browser since lots of our software, including Gmail, is built to be run within your browser. So it’s tempting to say that you just need to enable spell check in your browser or operating system, but it turns out that Gmail does actually have its own spell check and grammar check tools that you can enable. They’re going to work best because they are hooked directly into the compose window so whenever you’re typing in a response or new message, you’ll have spelling and grammar errors flagged.
Even better, correcting mistakes is super easy once you have spelling and grammar enabled in Gmail. However, I should also highlight that Gmail doesn’t always catch every single spelling error and its grammatical expertise is necessarily formulaic, at best. Useful, but if you’re composing something important, a human editor is always going to be a good addition too.
And so, let’s peek in on my friend Leon’s email to his boss after a contentious meeting at his agency. His draft email:
I think his passion is getting in the way of being clear and precise in his communication. There are a couple of obvious errors and at least one misused word that produces a grammatical error too. But this isn’t a quiz! Instead, let’s let Gmail do the work. To start, it’s time to change the settings. That’s done by clicking on the gear icon, which brings up a new quick settings menu:
Worth exploring, but for now this isn’t where we want to go. Instead click on “See all settings” and then make sure you’re on the “General” tab. Now scroll down until you see these two options:
Turn both on, then scroll to the very bottom of the Settings page and click “Save Changes”. Now Leon’s in much better shape because Gmail identifies spelling and grammar errors with little squiggly underlines:
Not everything’s flagged, however, so as I said earlier you do have to be careful. For example “meating” should be “meeting” and the last word of the first paragraph should be “candid”, not “tcandid”. Not sure why it hasn’t picked up on those errors, but at least it got the two most egregious mistakes, right? To fix a spelling error, just click on the word:
Same thing with grammatical hiccups, as denoted with a blue underline:
One more quick read through to ensure that all the errors and mistakes have been corrected and a “Send” sends off the newly revised message.
Easy enough once you enable this feature!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Gmail since the beginning of the service. I remember sending people invitations to sign up for the beta, actually. Suffice to say, I have lots of useful Gmail tutorials and help here on the site, so please check it out while you’re visiting. Thanks!
I just purchased an iPad. My windows desktop uses Grammarly. I have a subscription to it. I wanted two to install it on my iPad, but when it got to the keyboard part there was a warning about 3 party being able to read my passwords, credit cards and correspondents. I did not allow and shut it down, I really liked Grammarly on my Windows desktop, but am learly about adding my subscription to my iPad. Any thoughts will be appreciated.
I would check with the Grammarly team to see what they advise, Jim!
Thank you, Dave.