Watch Your Language in Adobe InDesign: Paragraph and Character Styles

It might feel like a minor inconvenience to have the language set to English: US instead of English: UK or vice versa, but actually it impacts on spelling and grammar checks, and also automated word breaks.

If you are not using Paragraph and Character Styles (shame on you!), then you can change the Language of text in your document by highlighting all the text and selecting Window > Type & Tables > Character from the top menu or Command + T in macOS to open the Character menu and then selecting the language from the dropdown box at the bottom of the menu.



To set the language for the whole program, go to Dictionary and Auto-correct languages from InDesign > Preferences...



For Paragraph and Character Styles you need to define the language within the style itself under the Advanced Character Formats tab.


If you have already highlighted the entire document and changed the language via the Character (window/submenu), then this will lead to a mismatch between style and actual language. To resolve this:
  1. Place your cursor within a styled text (no more than one style at a time)
  2. Press Shift + Alt + Command + R (macOS) this will then resolve the conflict (and there will no longer be a paragraph marker with a cross through and the little plus sign when the paragraph submenu is open)


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