Font affects MS Word's spell check ability?

Question

When I use the Wingdings font, the spell checker doesn't work (Wingdings isn't the only font I have this problem, there are others).

How can I fix this, how can I force the spell checker to ignore the font, and focus on the characters themselves?

This is what I mean:

BTW I did not click ignore, or anything of that nature.

Answer 1

I'd assume this is because different fonts could signify different languages. English fonts are checked using the appropriate English spelling dictionary, but for non-English fonts it would not make sense to check it using an English dictionary. Wingdings being a symbol font, not a language font, is probably not checked by any dictionary ever.

Another way to look at it is this: If you were typing in a font such as MSP Mincho (Japanese), you would not want the system to spell check the output based on an English dictionary.