How to use spell check and autocorrection in Pages on Mac

Spelling and grammar are essential when composing a document in Pages on Mac, especially for business or school papers. Knowing how to use the spelling and grammar check along with autocorrection can save you from simple mistakes that can make your documents appear unprofessional or worse.

If you haven’t taken a moment to check out these tools, this tutorial is for you. Here’s how to use spelling and grammar check as well as autocorrection in Pages on your Mac.

Auto-correct and spell check in the Pages app on Mac

Spelling and grammar checking in Pages

While you can have Pages check your spelling as you type, you can also go through a document with the spelling and grammar check yourself. This lets you see the errors, add words to your Ignored Words list that might display as misspelled, and ignore things if you like.

Keyboard shortcut for spelling and grammar

A quick way to zip through and check your document for spelling and grammar errors is with a keyboard shortcut.

With your Pages document open, hold Command and press the Colon ( ; ) key. This will highlight the first error. If you keep holding the Command key, each time you press the Colon key, you’ll move to the next error.

  • To correct an error you see, right-click or hold Control and click. Then, choose the correction from the context menu.
  • To ignore it for the rest of the document, select Ignore Spelling.
  • To add the word to your Ignored Words list, select Learn Spelling.
Spelling Grammar Check Context Menu Pages Mac

Menu bar actions for spelling and grammar

You can use the actions in the menu bar with Pages open for spelling and grammar checks as well:

1) Click Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Check Grammar with Spelling.

2) Then click Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Check Document Now.

Spelling Grammar Check Menu Pages Mac

3) You’ll see the first error highlighted, and you can use the Command + Colon (;) keyboard shortcut explained above to highlight the next error.

Spelling and grammar check window

To make things easier, you can open the Spelling and Grammar check window. Click Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Grammar with Spelling. When the window pops open, you can go through each error in the document using the Find Next button.

If a correction is recognized, you’ll see it in the box below:

  • To apply it, click Change.
  • To ignore it for the rest of the document, click Ignore.
  • To add it to your Ignored Words list, click Learn.

And if you only want to check the spelling in the pop-up window, uncheck the box on the bottom right corner for Check grammar.

Spelling Grammar Check Popup Window Pages Mac

Autocorrection in Pages

If you’d rather stick with using autocorrection in Pages and not check your spelling yourself, this is simple.

Enable and adjust autocorrect settings

To enable autocorrection, do the following.

1) Open Pages and from the menu bar, click Pages > Preferences.

2) Select the Auto-Correction tab.

3) Mark the box at the top for Correct Spelling Automatically.

Enable Autocorrection Pages Mac

To adjust the settings, keep that Preferences window open to the Auto-Correction tab. You can then enable or disable settings for capitalizing words automatically, detecting lists and links, using smart quotes and dashes, and replacing text with symbols.

Just check or uncheck these options and then close the window when you finish.

Using autocorrection in Pages

With autocorrection enabled, misspelled words will be underlined in red, and those with suggestions for you will be underlined in blue.

  • To apply a change when there’s only one suggestion, just continue typing, and the word will be corrected automatically.
  • To apply a change when there’s more than one, just pick one from the options that display.
  • To ignore suggestions, hit your Escape key.
  • To undo an autocorrection, put your cursor on the word and either right-click or hold Control, and click and pick your original spelling from the context menu.
Autocorrection Pages Mac

Seeing your Ignored Words list

If you think you may have ignored a word by mistake or would like to add those you often misspell to the list, click Pages > Preferences and go to the Auto-Correction tab once more. Click the Ignored Words button.

Here you’ll see a list of words you’ve ignored in any Pages document. To remove one, select it and click the minus sign and to add one, click the plus sign. Click OK when you finish and close the window.

Ignored Words Pages Mac

If you use Pages on your Mac for all of your document creations, whether for work or personal documents, knowing how to use spelling and grammar check along with autocorrection is essential.

Do you have any tips for other Pages users that you’d like to share?

Other tips for the Pages app: