Change the language US English to UK english

[AbhilashU]

Hi, please help me to change the language setting to English: UK. Tried every options but its not happening. Please let me know the solution for my problem.

[Willi Adelberger]

You need to change in extended character properties the language of your text. The best way you do it in changing the language as part of the paragraph styles.

[AbhilashU]

Tried that to, but its not changing. Still it shows US english. Also when we close the document and open new document it shows the same.

[Willi Adelberger]

1. Did you check the paragraph style?
2. Do you use a character style? Look also in GREP, Inline and Nested Styles.
3. Have you done some manual overrides? You see it, if a + is beside the parafrph style name.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

There are various levels of preferences here= to help you going forward.

To change your InDesign preference:

1. Open InDesign without opening a document, go to Preferences > Dictionary and change to English UK.

2. Still without a document open, Edit any Paragraph Styles. Typically, without any document there would be only "Basic Paragraph Style". Change the dictionary assigned to that style, even if you never use it.

3. Open the Type > Character (Cmd-T) panel and confirm it has English UK at the bottom.

Close InDesign and reopen to confirm these preferences were set.

Once you do this, any new document you start should be good.

This WILL NOT change any existing document. For those, you will have to edit the Paragraph Styles assigned to the text you are trying to spell check. If your Style is based on another one, you should go back to the root style and change it there. Go through your entire list of Paragraph Styles to check.

For any text that has NO style assigned, you can Search and Replace for any dictionary and replace it for another, say you have text with no Styles applied.

 

[AbhilashU]

Thanks brad, It's working.

[JasonDD210]

Thanks. But what a convoluted mess just to change the language!

[JasonDD210]

None of the options work for me. It is stuck in another language, even though it's written in English. Whenever I check the spelling, it goes back to Swedish which I was using before.

[rob day]

Hi @JasonDD210 Did you try the script I posted?

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/98453a4b-80c7-49d0-7702-e507d8404479

Try making the selected language the app default.

[JasonDD210]

Thanks for the help. No I didn't try the script. However, the fact that you actaully may need to use a script for this gave me clue as to what the problem was.

In the end I went through every paragraph style individually and force the language setting to be English.

All the styles inherit from [Basic Paragraph], but I guess this language setting had been overridden at some point. Anyway, it took about an hour of my time to figure all this out. It should be a simple task in my opinion. This put me in such a bad mood that I stopped working for the day.

In future I'll have to make sure I approach language in a way that is easy to change.

[rob day]

should be a simple task in my opinion

There has to be a way to make documents using multiple languages—e.g., anything with translations—so language as a character level property isn’t going to change.

[JasonDD210]

I think what may have happened is that I didn't inherit Basic Paragraph style on all of the paragraph styles when I made them. If I had done that at the start I could have just made the change in the Basic style.

Is there a way to remove any overrides at this level?

[Willi Adelberger]

1. Never use [Basic Paragraph].
2. Make a hierarchy from one selfdefined style. All pararaph styles will iherit the basic information from this style.
3. If you want change the style for all future make these changes or import the styles when no document is open. All new documents will get the settings you do when no document is open.

[JasonDD210]

Thanks. I actually thought of doing that, but didn't because I assumed that was what Basic Paragraph was for. Can you explain why we shouldn't use Basic Paragraph?

[rob day]

It can be a problem when you cut and paste between document’s that have different definitions for the [Basic Paragraph] style. When you paste styles with the same name the destination style is used to resolve the conflict and the text might unexpectedly change. The 2nd line is based on [No Paragraph Style]:

[JasonDD210]

Excellent thank you.

[rob day]

Hi @AbhilashU , if it’s something you need to do often this script should work:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/98453a4b-80c7-49d0-7702-e507d8404479

Dialog: