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Go to Edit - Spelling and Grammar - Show Spelling and Grammar

at the bottom set it to British English, this will change the system wide spell checker to use British English.
 
I did it in the International preference pane, choosing Language, then Edit List, choosing British English and setting that :)
 
Been a Mac user for a year now and I've never managed to find out how to change the language to British English!

Fantastic that I can now type colour without being told off :D
 
If you're British, you should set your user's language in Preferences -> International to British English, and then it will always be the default language in Pages and elsewhere.
 
Thank you, thank you, thank you. How lovely to type "colour" and "realise" and have them accepted :)
 
Thank you, thank you, thank you. How lovely to type "colour" and "realise" and have them accepted :)

Strictly speaking, realize is not, contrary to popular belief, American spelling. The OED lists such words under ~ize, with ~ise as an alternative spelling. Twenty years ago it only listed them as ~ize
 
Parish is right.

Words with a latin root are ~ise and those with a greek root are ~ize Though the British popular press seem to be intent on changing the way we spell. Well done the Times Literary Supplement, The Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Encyclopedia Britannica for protecting our ~izes against the onslaught of the tabloid newspapers...
 
Easy fix for PAges 09 on Mountain Lion

Sorted :p

With pages doc open go to inspector, text, more, then select all the text and change to language of choice.

Then go to Lang & text in main sys prefs and change your only lang option to your pref and system wide its done :)

As of 08/12 this is ok on Mountain Lion and Pages :D
 
Thank you

been a mac user for a year now and i've never managed to find out how to change the language to british english!

Fantastic that i can now type colour without being told off :d

n/a

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I did it in the International preference pane, choosing Language, then Edit List, choosing British English and setting that :)

This worked for me. I went into System Preferences/ Language and Text/ then selected British English in the options menu. Then it prompted me that the systemwide language change would take effect next time i logged in and the changes would take effect for apps when they were started. :eek:
 
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British English

Thank you, but..........

I may at last have found my way through to the solution, thanks to guidance from other contributors.

In the Language and Text Preference Pane, you must click Edit List, {thanks psychofreak missed it first time round,} under the <Drag languages into the order you prefer> list.
Because British English is not checked in the checkbox by default, so it is in the hidden section.

Having suffered Pages keeping random paragraphs as (American) English, despite Select All -----> British English, and only finding out later that the instruction is ignored, maybe.........

I'm logging off and restarting with everything crossed.

Sadly NO!

Pages still thinks meter is a unit of measurement and colour a typo, and my Pages Edit Menu, only has Spelling in it, with no options to select any language. {Not Spelling and Grammar xUKHCx. It has Proofreading instead of Grammar.}

Any further help would be appreciated, I've tried everything listed in this Rumour, and some of my own, I am beginning to think my version of Pages has bugs.
 
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British English: Not a Solution, but a possible reason.

Further information.

I have discovered what I suspect may be a bug in TextEdit which largely explains why Pages randomly reverts to American English in documents.

It is in the Copy-->Paste procedures.

If you have ALL your Applications set to British English, and your System Preferences also set to British English there is still a nasty lurking.

You can compose text in TextEdit, British English.
Copy it.
Paste it into a Pages document in British English, and the pasted text will be in AMERICAN English.:mad:

If you do not notice and correct immediately, that section may randomly remain as American English, even if you Select All, and change to British English in the Pages document.

How do I draw Apple's attention to this suspected bug, please?
Well, two suspected bugs, the Select All command obviously is buggy too.
 
British English and Possible Bug and Contacting Apple

Thanks Moonjumper,

I will follow the Link you gave me.

Since posting I have nailed one bug hard down.

It is in Pages 'Best Practice' document.

Despite changing the Body text to British English; you must also change all styles, including those you create yourself, to British English, Individually.
If you don't, your document will have access to an American Dictionary and challenge metre, colour etc. randomly in paragraphs affected by your Styles choices.

This Randomly occurring paragraph problem is not reliably solved by Select All change to British English, so it is important to change All the styles that you intend to use before you begin serious work on your document.

Thanks again for the help received,

B16EM
 
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