British English Mail spell check

This problem applies to other apps as wel as Mail e.g. Pages.

I've battled long and hard with this and wish there was a way to simply obliterate US English from my iPad. Incidentally PCs suffer similarly.

I notice that in settings/general/language the British English option can be miles down the list and so easily missed. Once selected it appears at the top of the list.

Anyway what I have discovered is that with the apps Mail and Pages the spell check language is a function of the keyboard type, ie. US keyboard = US spellings, UK keyboard = British spellings. It is irrelevant what language is chosen in Settings. This is a problem for countries that use British spellings but US keyboards, mainly for the $ sign eg. Zimbabwe and I guess Australia etc.

Come on Apple set you apps spelling defaults to match the chosen language in settings and not the keyboard type.

Neil Bradshaw wrote:

I have discovered is that with the apps Mail and Pages the spell check language is a function of the keyboard type, ie. US keyboard = US spellings, UK keyboard = British spellings. It is irrelevant what language is chosen in Settings.

Yes, that is the way iOS has always worked, for 5 years now. I don't think it is realistic to imagine Apple is going to change it to the way you want it. Nobody who uses more than one language wants to change their whole interface language to just to change their spellcheck for one email or text passage.

At best you might ask them to make the spellcheck language settable independently of both keyboard and OS language, like it is in OS X.

I'm puzzled why you are posting about the iPad in the forum for OS X 10.6 in any case. The right forum is at

https://discussions.apple.com/community/ipad/using_ipad

and for Apple to see your request, it is best to put it at

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

I don't understand why someone in Zimbabwe using an iPad would have a problem using the English (UK) keyboard. Could you explain that in more detail?

Can I resurrect this discussion to ask about how personal computers are sold in the UK and other countries where correct English (that is, British English) is the norm?

Although I am a native British English speaker, I have never bought a personal computer of any flavour in the UK, having lived in Belgium since 1971 and Spain since 2006. I have therefore always had to set the language myself.

But how are personal computers sold elsewhere? Are Macs sold ready for British English or does the user have to modify the settings? And what about Windows machines?

IIRC, you choose which language+variant you want when you first boot your new Mac. UK Macs come with a UK keyboard by default, i.e. with the £ sign.

Windows has possibly changed since I last used it in earnest, but you typically get a localised, single-language version. You can't switch the OS language like with OS X or Linux. The same goes for MS Office.

Thank you.