Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

need to change default spelling language

  • 3 replies
  • 46 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

hello,

Out of nowhere, my default language in the spell checker for many, but not all, websites has been switched to Hebrew. I don't know why. I want them ALL to be in English-US. Things suggested I do elsewhere and have done to no avail: I deleted my cache, I re-downloaded and installed Firefox (still on version 20.0), I changed the default language in the preferences.

I'm running a Mac and have not had this problem until a couple of weeks ago and it's driving me crazy.

hello, Out of nowhere, my default language in the spell checker for many, but not all, websites has been switched to Hebrew. I don't know why. I want them ALL to be in English-US. Things suggested I do elsewhere and have done to no avail: I deleted my cache, I re-downloaded and installed Firefox (still on version 20.0), I changed the default language in the preferences. I'm running a Mac and have not had this problem until a couple of weeks ago and it's driving me crazy.

All Replies (3)

more options

So, the currently selected dictionary changes after closing and restarting Firefox?

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages submenu.

  • Open the "Add Dictionaries" link to install a dictionary if you do not have one.
  • Make sure that [X] "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu is check-marked.

If you do not keep changes after a restart then see:

more options

Hello Cor-El. It's not just that the dictionaries do not load after restarting firefox (which they do), it's that they will remember for some websites (e.g. this one) but not for others (e.g. facebook). I tried almost everything in that help file, but I'm thinking that prefs.js doesn't exist as I couldn't find it in my Library (I have a Mac). The only thing that seems to have worked was creating a new profile, which I'm not thrilled about since I've lost all my settings. I didn't think such a simple problem would require such a drastic solution...

more options

Note that web pages can disable the built-in spell checker with a spellcheck="false" attribute in a text area or input form.

Google Translate does this for instance.

<textarea id=source name=text wrap=SOFT tabindex=0 dir="ltr" spellcheck="false" autocapitalize="off" autocomplete="off" autocorrect="off" ></textarea>