This screen from the menu Options\Preferences, Lets you change the settings for the composition of your messages in MesNews:

Zone Composition of a message :

Reply after the body of a message : When ticked the cursor for your reply will be put automatically after the quoted text, otherwise the cursor will be put in the beginning.
Authorized sending in HTML format : When ticked you get access to the html composition screen. When you only post in groups where html is not allowed you can untick this box.
Animated smileys : when ticked the smileys are shown animated in the bottom part of the compsitionscreen. If you think that is slowing down Windows you can untick this box.

Remark : Smileys can not be animated under Windows 95/98/Me.

Zone Dictionary :

When writing messages you can check the spelling via the icon . In this zone you can set the settings for the Dictionary and the way of checking.

Dictionary : choose the Dictionary to be used when checking your text. When you have Office installed on your pc, you will have dictionaries available. If this is not the case (or if those dictionaries not work) you can download these from this site. http://www.luziusschneider.com/Speller/English/index.htm. For a French download and install the file ISpEnFrGe.exe (direct link: http://www.luziusschneider.com/Speller/ISpEnFrGe.exe).
ignore quoted text : When ticked the quoted text is not checked for spelling mistakes.
check from beginning : When ticked the spell check always starts at beginning of the text. Otherwise the check starts at the position of the cursor and the text before that is ignored.
In both cases, when the text is selected only the selected text will be checked.