UPDATE: On MacOS Sierra, after you have set your language preference using System Preferences -> Language and Region, you can then go to Text Preferences under Keyboard settings to follow step 3 (and onward) from below.
If like me you have not yet learnt to drop the ‘u’ from ‘colour’, then you might have noticed that Mac OS X Snow Leopard makes it annoyingly difficult to switch the system language preference, especially for spell checking (worse, I suspect the interface for spell check language settings is buggy). To that end, below is a quick outline of the steps I used to switch to British English (click on the small images to see the full version).
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Bring up System Preferences (there is usually an icon on your dock with three gears). Click on Languages & Text.
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Select the Language tab and order languages by dragging and dropping them. In my case, that meant moving British English to the top. What this obtains is a change of the language that is used by the system to communicate with you. There is more work to do.
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Select the Text tab. On the right you should see the preference for Spelling. The default value for this setting is Automatic by Language. You could leave it like that or change it to British English; the latter value forces the system to always use British English for spell checking. If you set this field to the language of your preference (British English in my case), you might think you are done, but you are not (and this is where one of the afore-hinted bugs might lurk).
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Now you need to really enable British English by selecting Setup from the Spelling pulldown.
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One look at the Setup popup makes it clear why work remains, for there you will see that British English is not selected. You will now need to check British English and drag it up to the top. Do not be misled or appeased by the explanatory text that suggests that this ordering matters only when spelling is being checked automatically by language. Unless your preferred language selected here, it will not be used, even if it is selected in the Spell field.
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