The Aggressive Auto-Correction
Google Docs includes a robust spelling and grammar checking system. Beyond just underlining misspelled words in red, it includes a feature called “Automatically use spelling suggestions.” If Google Docs is highly confident that a word you typed is a misspelling (for example, typing “teh” instead of “the”), it will automatically change the word as soon as you hit the spacebar, without asking for confirmation.
While this can speed up typing for common typos, it can be incredibly frustrating if you are writing technical documentation, fictional names, slang, or uncommon acronyms. The auto-correction might silently change a deliberate, obscure word into a common one without you noticing, leading to embarrassing errors in your final document. If you prefer to manually review every red underline rather than having Docs silently change your text, you should disable this feature.
How to Disable Automatic Spelling Correction
You can turn off automatic corrections in the Google Docs Preferences menu.
- Open any document in Google Docs.
- Click on the Tools menu in the top menu bar.
- Select Preferences from the dropdown list.
- A popup window will appear. Ensure you are on the General tab.
- Look down the list of checkboxes for the option labelled Automatically use spelling suggestions (or “Automatically correct spelling”).
- Uncheck the box next to this option.
- Click the blue OK button at the bottom of the window to save your changes.
Google Docs will stop automatically altering your text as you type. If you spell a word incorrectly, it will still place a red squiggly line underneath it, but it will wait for you to right-click (or use the spell check tool) to manually accept a correction.