Hotmail Spell-checker: check grammar and spelling of email messages you send
HotmailUniversity
When you compose email messages from Hotmail, you will not be able to tell if the grammar and spelling of your message is correct; this is a feature to keep in mind if you are accustomed to writing content in advanced text editors and word processors like Microsoft Word, which will be run the spellchecker "on-the-fly", and add wavy underlines where it thinks you made a mistake (in Word, redirect waves indicate spelling mistakes, blue waves for formatting issues, and green wavy underline means grammatical errors - the screenshot below is taken from Word 2010). But Windows Live Hotmail comes with a built-in spell-checker, which you can run manually - on demand. Unlike some email programs like Microsoft Outlook, the Windows Live team has not yet added settings like "Prevent me from sending messages with spelling errors", which means that you'll need to remember to manually check every email before you send it.
How to spell check the current message
When you are inside the email composer window, type the body of your message as you usually would; when you are done with the entire content, or a portion of it worth proofing, click on the "Spell check" button /link in the toolbar, above the editor: (it shows "Identify possible misspellings (F7)" as tooltip when you hover above it).
- As soon as you do, one of two things happens. If Hotmail didn't find any spelling issues in your email, it will display the following confirmation message: "The spelling checker didn't find any problems. But if you write more, check again".
- To re-check the spelling later on, just click once more on "Spell check" in the toolbar, or click on the "check again" link in the message.
- If Hotmail did find spelling errors in your email, you will receive this message: "The spelling checker found some words for you to look at. If you write more, check again", which also includes a "check again" link to re-run proofing after you've made some corrections.
- When Hotmail catches spelling mistakes, it will display a red dotted border under the misspelled words, as shown on the screenshot below:
As you can tell, the word isn't misspelled as much as using a localized spelling - in this case, we're using Hotmail with US settings (including American English dictionary), and spelled a word using its British spelling. This is a good place to mention that the Windows Live spellchecker will base its suggestions and corrections on your Hotmail language settings, which can be customized. - Now click on the misspelled word, and you have a few options:
• Select one of the suggested words to use it as replacement in your email.
• Click "Ignore all" to force Hotmail to treat this particular word as correctly spelled for the purpose of this message (ideal when you type an email using acronyms you are not likely to reuse).
• Click "Add to dictionary" to enter this word into the custom dictionary Hotmail maintains for your account (in other words, this will not affect other Hotmail users, nor any other email accounts you may have yourself with Hotmail). When you choose to add such a word -and make the spellchecker ignore it permanently- the red underline dots will disappear, and Hotmail will no longer flag that particular word as misspelled!
Tip: Hotmail also support the same keyboard shortcut found in Microsoft Word and other Office applications. Press the F7 key to check the spelling of the message you are editing!
How to check the grammar of your emails from Hotmail
At this point, the Windows Live spellchecker doesn't include corrections for grammatical mistakes, so you'll need to resort to external options to cope with this lack; these relatively time-consuming alternatives make it worth only for important messages, like tending your resignation or asking for a raise.
Compose your email message inside Microsoft Word or an advanced word processing equivalent - note that the "Word Web App", which allows you to create and edit Office documents from Hotmail, doesn't yet support grammar checks - but unlike the email editor, it does support "on-the-fly" spell checking.
A second option is to use a free online grammar checker of your choice. In our experience, these fall quite dramatically short - some of the paid online grammar check tools are better, and we'll post soon a link to one of them.