Do Not Proofread a Section of a Document

SUMMARY: Or, why is a section of my Word 2010 document not getting proofed?


Certain Microsoft Word 2010 documents may contain sections of text with scientific, medical, or other technical jargon, quotations with misspelled words or lack of punctuation, or transcriptions of conversations where formal English rules are not always obeyed. When typing or inserting such text into documents, you may grow tired of seeing green or red squiggles underneath.

Conversely, you may be editing another user’s document and wonder why certain blocks of text are not being proofread correctly. You may know you typed a word incorrectly, for example, but Word 2010 just doesn’t mark it. Yet elsewhere in the document Word underlines such text with a red squiggly. Why is this?


1. Select a block of text that you want to mark as not to be proofread, or select a block of text that you suspect is marked as such.

2. Select the “Review” tab in the Ribbon.

3. In the “Language” section, click the “Language” button / pull-down.

4. Select “Set Proofing Language” from the pop-up menu that appears.

5. The “Language” dialog box appears.

Marking text in a Word 2010 document to not be checked for spelling and grammar errors

Note the “Do not check spelling or grammar” box.

If this box is unchecked, the selected block of text will not be proofread. If the checkbox has a box inside (see the screenshot to the right), then some of the marked text will be proofread – and some won’t be.

6. You can hit the “Cancel” button if you don’t want to make any changes; otherwise, check or uncheck this box as desired and click “OK” to close the dialog box.

Text auto correction will still occur if you add text to a section that is marked to not be proofread.