I use the Stickies application as a catch-all for weird stuff I know I want to keep, but I’m not quite sure where I want to keep it. Eventually, I find homes for these odd snippets of code, advice on home repairs, notes to myself on upcoming project, and other such things…but for quite a while, they can reside in Stickies.
Given the odd stuff I record in Stickies, I usually don’t want my notes spell checked. Until OS X 10.6 came out, there wasn’t an easy way to disable spell checking in all Stickies notes—you could either turn it off on each note (uncheck the Edit -> Spelling -> Check Spelling While Typing menu item), or jump through some hoops to permanently disable spell checking.
In 10.6, though, there’s an easy (if not obvious) way to disable spell checking on all notes. Open a new note in Stickies, and then uncheck Edit -> Spelling and Grammar -> Check Spelling While Typing. Next, make sure the note is set up as you like—use the Font and Color menus to make it look just as you’d like, because whatever you decide on is going to be the default for newly-created notes.
Finally, to disable spell checking on all future Stickies notes, select Note -> Use as Default. Because spell checking is disabled in the note you’re using as the default, it will be disabled in all new Stickies notes. (Stickies in 10.5 has this same menu item, but it doesn’t respect the setting of the Check Spelling While Typing menu item.)
If you decide you want spell checking back on by default, turn it on again via the Edit menu, and then repeat the Note -> Use as Default step.