Q: does pages automatically edit

Pages is no Word clone. It is a basic word processor without most of Words features.

You can choose to have Pages check your spelling as you type, your grammar as you type, or both. You can disable those features while you type for productivity, and then ask it to scan your document for linguistic transgressions, and recommended replacements. Neither Word, nor Pages are as good as Grammarian for this purpose though.

You can place the insertion beam over a word, and by pressing the control+command+d key (or three-finger tap on a trackpad) sequence, pop up dictionary references to that word.