The Unwanted Editor
Google Docs features a highly aggressive spell-checking engine. While identifying typos with a red squiggly line is universally helpful, the software also attempts to be proactive by automatically replacing words it believes are misspelled as you type them. If you are writing a technical document containing industry-specific jargon, typing code snippets, or drafting a fantasy novel with unique character names, Google Docs will constantly “correct” your specialized terms into standard English words. This forces you into a frustrating cycle of typing a word, watching it change, and frantically hitting backspace to undo the automatic correction.
Silencing the Autocorrect Engine
To regain complete control over your vocabulary and stop Google Docs from automatically altering the words you explicitly typed, you must disable the autocorrect feature within the application’s preference menu.
Open any Google Doc. Navigate to the top menu bar and click on Tools. From the dropdown list, click on Preferences. A dialogue box will appear in the center of your screen. Ensure you are on the General tab located at the top of this box. Look down the list of options until you find the checkbox labelled Automatically correct spelling. Click this checkbox to remove the checkmark. Click the blue OK button at the bottom right to save your changes. Google Docs will continue to flag unrecognized words with a red underline, allowing you to manually review them, but it will never again forcefully change your text without your explicit permission.