How can I change the language for automatic spelling correction?

Question

I set my input source to be US English. And the flag showing on the taskbar is also an American flag.

But whenever I type something in Mail.app or Notes.app the spell check still corrects my spelling to British English:

• e.g. it highlights my "organize" and suggest s"organise".

Please, how to make my Mac (OS X 10.8) an American?

Answer 1

For OS X 10.8:

System Preferences > Languages & Text > Text > Spelling

Or for OS X 10.9 and later:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Spelling

Answer 2

To add to what gentmatt said, in the case you need to keep "Automatic by Language" because you happen to write in different languages, click on "Set Up…" in the list shown for the Spelling option.

On the dialog box that appears, you can change the order for the languages. In my case, this is the order I chose.

Now, I can write organize, and the word is not corrected, nor do I get a suggestion for writing organise. (It happens that organise is shown as incorrect.)

Answer 3

In Mavericks (10.9):

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text -> Spelling

or

System Preferences -> Language & Region -> Keyboard Preferences -> Text -> Spelling

Answer 4

Autocorrect with multiples languages (automatic by language) in Mavericks is broken. It does not underline all the bad written words. I have to select only 1 language to get it properly working.

Answer 5

Building on the other answers, in Ventura this is now located in

System Settings > Keyboard > Input Methods : Edit... > Automatic by Language > Set Up...

This can also be changed using the command line with :

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSPreferredSpellServers '((en,Apple),("en_GB",Apple),(fr, Apple),(es, Apple))'

where the part between ' quotes is a list of the languages you want to spell check, in order.

You can use

defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSPreferredSpellServers

to show the current list of languages before changing it.

---

(Sorry for the French screenshots :) ).

Answer 6

What worked for me is:

Go to "System Preferences" -> "Language & Region".

Under "Preferred languages" add "English (US)" and remove "English".

This changed the spell checking from British English to American English.

Answer 7

These answers were great for the most part but have slowly aged out of date after ten years. I'm currently on Mojave 10.14.6 here. The global option remains in the Text section of the Keyboard preference pane but that section has mostly been taken over by text expansion. Spelling has moved so here's a couple of screenshots to pilot you in:

One can set multiple languages. Here's the ones I have set:

You can also change the language for spelling while in an application.