Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac now supports the French spelling reform

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was released this week. Users who are interested in the French language will notice a change in the French spell-checker, which now takes into account the French spelling reform, which is recommended by official bodies such as the Académie Française, the Conseil Supérieur de la langue française, the French Ministry of Education, the Groupe québécois pour la modernisation de la norme du français, the Réseau pour la nouvelle orthographe du français, etc.

The official texts make it abundantly clear that both the traditional (‘old’) spelling and the ‘new’ (recommended) spelling are valid. As can be seen below, the Mac Office 2008 speller accepts both forms by default (traditional and new spellings). Users of the Office 2007 French speller are already familiar with the three options which enable them to change this default mode. As of this week, Mac Office users can now also decide whether they want their speller to:

(a)  consider the old and new forms as valid (which is the default option)

(b) apply only the traditional (‘old’) spelling (i.e. ‘new’ forms will be squiggled)

(c) apply the ‘new’ (rectified) spelling only (i.e. the ‘old’ forms will be squiggled)

If you are interested in a very brief description of the kinds of changes you might notice with this new speller, you can check out this post, which was written when we released the new speller for Office users a while ago.

 

  -- Thierry Fontenelle (Program Manager)