Senior Field Engineer

As Senior Field Engineer at DPCI, Rob Underwood is responsible for a wide range of services including training, technical support, and systems integration.

The co-author of six Adobe training books, Underwood is an Adobe Certified Print Specialist, an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, Photoshop, and Acrobat, and Certified Technical Training (CTT). In addition to articles on the Creative Suite, Rob also writes on K4 Editorial System.

Blogs

Recent Webinars

> Integrating K4 and Drupal to Support Multi-channel Workflows

White Papers

> Innovations in Digital Asset Management, Circa 2008

> DPCI Seminar: Impediments to XML Workflow

> DPCI and Digital Asset Management Fact Sheet

June 23, 2009

How to Correct Spelling Errors in Multiple Languages Using InDesign

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If you edit publications in multiple languages, publish books on learning languages, or even plan on putting together a cookbook filled with foreign recipes, you should know how to spell check these documents using the different language dictionaries built into Adobe InDesign. You can change your languages right inside the Control panel in InDesign, or even build it into a paragraph style to save time.

When you place foreign language text inside a text frame in InDesign you may see the dreaded red squiggly line indicating a misspelled word. This means you have Dynamic Spelling turned on. InDesign is warning you that the words are misspelled based on the current dictionary. If you can't see the red squiggly line, choose Edit > Spelling > Dynamic Spelling.

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With Dynamic Spelling turned on, the InDesign English dictionary thinks that the Spanish words are misspelled.

You may be tempted to go into the InDesign preferences and change your dictionary there. The dictionary preferences inside that window are great for setting up things like a central user dictionary, or even defining a new custom-made dictionary, but not for changing the language dictionary for the whole document. Changing the language dictionary is handled in a much easier way. You can change the dictionary for selected text so that when you run a spell check, it checks that specific text against that selected dictionary.

First, select the foreign language text you would like to connect to another dictionary. Then choose Type > Character to display the Character panel. If you are using InDesign CS2 or earlier, this item is hidden by default. You can use the drop-down menu on the Character panel to choose "More Options." This will reveal the language drop-down menu. You can now choose the correct language for your text. If you have Dynamic Spelling turned on you should notice the red squiggly lines have disappeared because those words are found in that newly-selected dictionary.

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Choosing a different language in the Character panel.

You can also see the Language setting inside the Control bar, as long as you have text selected and you are viewing the Character settings. Depending on your screen size, InDesign may not have the room to display this option.

Choosing a different language in the Control Bar.

Now that the foreign text is marked with the correct language, you can check the spelling. Choose Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling. In the Check Spelling window you can see that the Language is now marked as the new language you just picked.

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The language the dictionary is using appears in the Check Spelling window.

If you are using multiple languages inside a single document, you can build the language tagging right into a Paragraph Style. If you build the language into the Paragraph Style, not only will the Paragraph Style apply the correct look and feel to the text, but it will also tag it for the correct language when you check the spelling of that text. To build the language into a Paragraph Style, select the text you want to be tagged. In the Paragraph Styles panel, use the drop-down menu to create a new Paragraph Style. In the Advanced Character Formats section, you will see a drop-down menu for Language. Choose the language you want for that style.

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Building a selected language into a Paragraph style.

You can also build a Character Style to mark certain words in a paragraph instead of applying the language tagging to a whole paragraph. If you were putting together a cookbook that used a lot of French words that continually came up during a spell check, you could make a Character style that could tag just those specific words. In fact, the character style could have no other attributes other that the language. If the Character Style only applied the language, you could use the Character Style on any text and it wouldn't change the look of that text. To build just a language into a character style, make sure you don't have any text selected. If you don't have any text selected, the new Character Style will start with no attributes. Then create a New Character Style by choosing New Character Style from the Character Style panel's drop-down menu. Select the Advanced Character Formats section and choose the appropriate language. Now you can use that Character Style on any text that is in another language.

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Use a Character Style to tag specific words in a paragraph.

Finally, I'd like to tell you about one other trick you can do with languages. If you often use Placeholder Text in your InDesign documents, all that Lorem Ipsum is marked as being misspelled. This can be frustrating when you try to check spelling on the entire document. However, just like building a character style to mark only the language and not change formatting, you could build a Character Style that applied no language. You will find the (No Language) tag at the top of the language list in Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, The Character panel, or inside the Control bar. Once the text is tagged with no language, spell check will not check the spelling of that text.
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Tagging Lorem Ipsum with no language.

No matter what language you use in your documents, InDesign makes it extremely easy to tag words, phrases or passages with the correct language. Even if you can't speak Slovak or Catalan, you can at least make sure it's spelled correctly!