Correct your spelling & grammar in Google Docs

Want to get more out of Google Docs for work or school? Sign up for a Google Workspace trial at no charge.

Google Docs can automatically correct misspellings and make suggestions for spelling and grammar. You can turn off autocorrect and suggestions in Google Docs settings.

Autocorrect and spelling and grammar suggestions are available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Autocorrect is also available in German. Spelling and grammar suggestions are also available in Italian.

Check spelling & grammar

You can check your spelling and grammar, then accept or ignore the corrections. 

1. Open a document in Google Docs.
2. In the top left, click Spell Check . A box will open in the top right corner.
   • To use a suggestion, click Change.
   • To ignore a suggestion, click Ignore.
   • To accept or ignore all suggestions, click More    Accept all or Ignore all.

If you have spelling and grammar suggestions turned on, misspelled words are underlined in red, and grammar suggestions are underlined in blue. Learn how to turn suggestions on or off. 

To quickly accept or ignore the corrections: 

1. Press Tab to accept the suggestion.
2. Right-click the red or blue underline. 
   • To accept the suggestion, click the edited word. 
   • To ignore the suggestion, click Ignore.
   • To report an incorrect suggestion, click Feedback on suggestion.

Add a word to your spelling suggestions dictionary

You can add words to the dictionary so Docs doesn't identify them as misspelled.

1. Open a document in Google Docs.
2. In the top left, click Spell Check . A box will open in the top right corner.
3. To add a word that appears in the spell checker to the dictionary, click Add to dictionary.

Remove a word from your dictionary

You can remove a word from your dictionary.

1. Open the document in Google Docs.
2. Right-click the word.
3. Select Remove from personal dictionary.

Turn off autocorrect

Autocorrect can automatically correct capitalization and spelling in Google Docs. It can also automatically detect links, lists, and quotes.

Autocorrect is available in:

• English 
• Spanish 
• French 
• Portuguese
• German

1. Open a document or presentation in Google Docs.
2. Click Tools Preferences  General.
3. To turn off certain autocorrects, like automatic capitalization, spelling corrections, or link detection, uncheck the box next to the function.
4. Click OK.

Turn off specific automatic substitutions

1. Open a document in Google Docs.
2. Click Tools   Preferences  Substitutions.
   • To turn off certain automatic substitutions, next to the word, uncheck the box.
   • To remove automatic substitutions, next to the word, click Remove .
3. Click OK.

Correct a word's spelling

To always correct a specific word's spelling:

1. Right-click on the word.
2. Click Always correct to [word].

Undo an automatic correction

1. After the word is corrected, hover your cursor over the word.
2. Click Undo or Turn off to permanently turn off that type of correction.

Turn suggestions on or off

Misspelled words are underlined in red.To turn spelling suggestions off:

1. Open a document in Google Docs.
2. Click Tools  Spelling  Underline errors.
3. The check mark will disappear to show that it is off.

Note: This will turn suggestions on or off for all of your documents. 

About machine learning

Spelling suggestions are powered by machine learning. As language understanding models use billions of common phrases and sentences to automatically learn about the world, they can also reflect human cognitive biases. Being aware of this is a good start, and the conversation around how to handle it is ongoing. Google is committed to making products that work well for everyone, and are actively researching unintended bias and mitigation strategies.

Related articles

Change your language for Docs, Sheets, and Slides