Grammar checker rant

[The Judge]

I've been threatening for some time to disable the Word grammar checker because it's forever winding me up telling me my "it's" should be "its" when I know I've got it right, and it's always flagging "-self" as wrong -- so the sentence "And then to find herself betrayed by him" should read "... find her betrayed" which really makes sense. Not.

Since my partner is getting fed up of me bitching about it, I thought I'd start a thread and every time it upsets me I can moan here. So, for today, apparently...

The pleas of the other children rose higher, and Towan was besieged.

should read "Towan were besieged" because "The verb of the sentence must agree with the subject in number." Well, Mr Clever-Clogs Word, it flaming well does, because Towan is a person and there's only one of him.


And the spell checker has decided to give me gyp, too. The fact that a hall in the castle is very long, and hence has been given the remarkable title of the Long Hall, means that Word keeps squiggly-underlining it and telling me it should read "Long Haul"... (which it damn well will be if it keeps trying to correct things which are right )


Other spelling/grammar incorrect-correction grumbles welcome.

 

[ctg]

Darling turn it off and save your nerves. The AI behind the sub-program is limited and it hasn't seen an upgrade for ages. But if you don't want to do that, you can always limit the options by unchecking the boxes on the choices.

 

[Parson]

Your Honor,

Grammar checkers are meant for people who write only as a last resort and often have no clue as to what the proper form is. Now people with an advanced degree and people who write for a living should normally never have to give such a niggling device a second look.

One will keep one's temper in much better check in this way.

Parson (Who never turns his grammar checker on, but probably should.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Are you sure that there's only one of Towan? Perhaps this is a plot twist of which you were previously unaware.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Well, you know TJ, I always wondered about your grasp on grammar...

 

[Boneman]

Hah! Stupid spell-checker obviously read it as Two-an, and thought it was plural.

It just cannot handle place names, even when you capitalise them. I have a character called Granny Coldstone: it always suggests Cold stone, Colds tone, Goldstone

It want to change 'an unspoken need' to 'an unspoken needs' !!!

"Have you need of the graveyard" should become "Have you needed the graveyard?"

" A young woman was trying to wind a bandage" to "A young woman was trying to win a bandage"

Spell-checker? Spell-wrecker, more like.

 

[Venusian Broon]

oh the herself/her, himself/him thing and the its/it's drives me up the bleedin' wall with M$ Word.

On the positive side, the program did teach me a lot about using semi-colon's in sentences.

 

[Finnien]

I stumbled upon this quote in an unrelated search several days ago. I had occasion to post it yesterday for something entirely different, and it seems that the quote may at least be entertaining or interesting in this case as well.

Joan Didion, from "Why I Write":
Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture. Nota bene.*

It tells you.

You don’t tell it.

 

[Anne Lyle]

On the positive side, the program did teach me a lot about using semi-colon's in sentences.

But not, apparently, either hyphens or apostrophes

I stopped using grammar checkers years ago, after one told me that I should replace all instances of "king" in my manuscript with the gender-neutral "monarch" (the default business settings are very PC!).

 

[Venusian Broon]

But not, apparently, either hyphens or apostrophes

Duh!

It just shows how much I rely on grammer/spell checkers when I'm writing! I'm so used to them, I usually forget when posting here there isn't one. (Its not high-lighting red so what I've wrotten must be fine )

 

[The Judge]

Good thinking, TDZ. Word is clearly ahead of me in cloning Towan... I think the problem arises in that particular sentence because it doesn't recognise "rose" as a verb.

I know I ought to turn it off, if only to save my blood pressure and my partner's long-suffering ears. And a very parsonical thought, Parson, that I ought to keep my temper. Though if I turned the other cheek, it would probably try and correct that, too. I suppose I keep it on as a back-stop, just in case I miss something. Though I do wonder that if it tries to correct things which are right, does it also fail to correct things which are wrong?

And I love that "win a bandage" Boneman. I think that one takes the prize! (I can just see a barker at a fair: "Roll up... roll up...")


NB: It's not just Word. I use an on-line thesaurus nowadays, as my real one is falling to bits, and the people behind it are pushing a new spelling/grammar/word choice gizmo which is meant to be wonderful. They put an extract up of a dummy report/essay and showed how it would correct mistakes, and in the middle of it was the phrase "the basic principals of good writing" -- which it didn't correct...

 

[chrispenycate]

"the basic principals of good writing" -- which it didn't correct...

but you could have a principal of good writing; in a school, perhaps. How's the poor little thing supposed to recognise the difference? It's principal principle should be to avoid upsetting judges by correcting things which were already correct…

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Ahh, there's one that plagued me when I took the tests at the Kelly Services temp agency!

Their test key was wrong on the question about "principal/principle", and I told them so when they said I got it wrong. The question was involving the usage that means "primary" or "first and foremost", which they said was "principle".

The ladies insisted it was correct, that "principal" means the leader of the school, and I insisted that they check their dictionary because there are three meanings for those two words, which they proceeded to do and then still told me that it said something it patently did not.

Then they told me that this was a black mark against me, because people they might assign me to work for would not appreciate my combative attitude. I told them that people they might assign me to work for would appreciate my knowledge of the English language, which would be an important part of said assignment.

For some strange reason, they never did find me an assignment.

 

[Mouse]

Ack, I hate the herself/her one. Also the PC one which tells me I can't say 'policewoman' and have to say 'police officer.'

You do know you can set the grammar check to only pick up certain things though, right?

 

[Dave]

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/27278-the-typesetters-knight-mayor.html

 

[The Judge]

You do know you can set the grammar check to only pick up certain things though, right?

Would you be insinuating that I don't even know how to do something as elementary as that? If so, you'd be correct...

Actually, it must be pre-set to pick up only some things, as it certainly doesn't rebuke me for using words like policewoman or king.

 

[Mouse]

Yeah, if you go to the grammar options there's all sorts of things for styles and what have you. I don't know what the 'policewoman' thing would fall under, otherwise I'd switch it off.

 

[The Ace]

What gets me is when it tries to, 'Correct,' my English (UK) spelling by showing the English (US) equivalent.

THERE'S a, 'U,' IN, 'COLOUR,' PEOPLE, AND AN, 'E,' IN 'GREY,' !!!!!!

 

[Warren_Paul]

What gets me is when it tries to, 'Correct,' my English (UK) spelling by showing the English (US) equivalent.

THERE'S a, 'U,' IN, 'COLOUR,' PEOPLE, AND AN, 'E,' IN 'GREY,' !!!!!!

You should be able to switch it to use a English (UK) dictionary somewhere in the grammar/spelling settings. That was something I did the first moment I installed Word.

 

[alchemist]

Sometimes it can't believe that you live outside the US and it switches back of its own accord.

You can also add character and place names to you dictionary so it doesn't underline them. But in practice, my mind just ignores the green and red now.