The Humanities Division has funded the installation of one copy of the German proofing tools for Word 97/2000 for a PC on a computer in the Writing Resource Center located in the Media Center in the Library. This proofing feature provides you with a spelling dictionary, hyphenation file, and grammar checker for German.

You have to set the language to German at the beginning of your file to access this feature if you are starting a new text. I

Once you have opened up a new file in Word, move the cursor to the menu at the top and click on "Tools" menu at the top bar.

Move down to "language" and then move to the right and click on "set language." Scroll down the language options to "German (Standard)," click on it to highlight it and then click the OK at the bottom of the box. Word will now access the German dictionary when checking you text.

To use the proofing feature with a German text that you have already created, you have to open the file and highlight the entire text by holding down the shift key and moving the cursor to the end of the document. Once the entire body of your text is highlighted, you should set the language to German according to the procedure outlined above. Word will now underline errors and offer corrections and explanations (in German) when you run the spelling and grammar feature. Make sure that the grammar check box is checked when you run the proofing feature. Otherwise only spelling errors will be noted by the program.

The German characters ä,Ä ö,Ö ü,Ü, and ß can be produced by hitting simultaneously the three keys control, shift and : and then typing the letter a, o, or u. The ß is produced by typing simultaneously control, shift and the symbol & and then typing s.

Please note that you should you reset the default language to English when you are done with your German document.

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