Grammar checker rant

[TheDustyZebra]

Yes, according to Open Office (sorry, don't have Word at home), that word should be either "supersonically" or "hypersonically", unless you'd prefer it to be just plain Parson or parsonage, which are at least in the ballpark.

I don't use any of the silly checkers, myself. I don't need high blood pressure.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Thanks to a background in both non-fiction publishing and programming, I am nitpickier than a nitpicking thing. I turn off auto-spellchecking wherever I can (not easy in OSX, frustratingly), and only run a spellcheck/grammarcheck when I'm about to send a manuscript off to my editor or beta-readers.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I switched off my grammar checker when it informed me I was being sexist for using policewoman and lady (Lady White-Bay is a countess). In the same chapter my character leaned with his back against a wall: apparently that is a cliche.

Although I am liking DEO's alternative sentence. Along with my son's Eat my destiny it needs a story.

I have considered that. In a world with many super heroes, maybe one of them is that kind of girl!

EDIT: Oh, dear. I just had a very good, very bad idea. Bwahahahahahaha!!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

You found a cliche As much as I tried I couldn't trigger it.

LOL I kept triggering it with physical movements like that. Turn the other cheek is also a cliche

 

[Jammill Khursheed]

Can't hear the phrase "turn the other cheek" without thinking of the wu-tang clan

"Turn the other cheek and I'll break your F%$£ing chin"

God bless Rza


Jammill

 

[Mouse]

I've got one now. I've written "Maybe a power walk." And the grammar check wants me to change it to either "maybe a powers walk" or "maybe a power walks." That doesn't even make sense! [FONT=&quot]
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[StormFeather]

I have to admit that grammar is my biggest weakness - I was either asleep during the relevant lessons, or my school failed to educate me properly. Certainly, the first I heard such terms as 'adverb' and 'past participle' were during my first French and German lessons.

I find the grammar checkers scary - I think I know what I'm saying, but shown one of those squiggly lines and I doubt myself completely and often end up not writing things just because I'm so easily confused and/or I'm such an ignoramus.

It's something I will get round to learning properly one day - probably along with the kids as they learn for themselves.

 

[Vertigo]

I've got one now. I've written "Maybe a power walk." And the grammar check wants me to change it to either "maybe a powers walk" or "maybe a power walks." That doesn't even make sense!

The problem with grammar checkers is that they do not understand the meaning of words. Your grammar checker's second example make perfect grammatical sense (not sure about the first one though). But the grammar checker doesn't know that power is a noun that can't actually walk. They are likely to be limited in this way for a long time to come.

 

[The Judge]

Storm, you are not an ignoramus! That's slapping-talk, that is!

I don't think any of us were taught the fundamentals, but I think we tend to know what feels right, and it's a question of building on that to find out why it's right. I recall Ursa did a very good post somewhere (?The Toolbox?) about the stages of learning which referred to that.

Meanwhile, next time you have a squiggle confuse you, ask us here in GWD. (And get a dozen different answers...)

 

[Mouse]

The problem with grammar checkers is that they do not understand the meaning of words. Your grammar checker's second example make perfect grammatical sense (not sure about the first one though). But the grammar checker doesn't know that power is a noun that can't actually walk. They are likely to be limited in this way for a long time to come.

Yeah I can understand 'a power walks' but 'a powers walk?!' What the frell is that?

 

[Vertigo]

Storm, you are not an ignoramus! That's slapping-talk, that is!

I don't think any of us were taught the fundamentals, but I think we tend to know what feels right, and it's a question of building on that to find out why it's right. I recall Ursa did a very good post somewhere (?The Toolbox?) about the stages of learning which referred to that.

Meanwhile, next time you have a squiggle confuse you, ask us here in GWD. (And get a dozen different answers...)

I learnt most of my English grammar studying Latin. I just wish I could still remember it now (or maybe that I'd paid more attention back then). You know, I can still vividly picture the page per verb latin book arranged in columns of English and Latin and each tense working down the page: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant... (hope I got that right!). The latin grammar was drilled into us unrelentingly but I only have vague memories of English grammar being taught and with nothing like as zealously. Mind you it was a monastery run boarding school!

Yeah I can understand 'a power walks' but 'a powers walk?!' What the frell is that?

There may be some use of power that I'm unfamiliar with (a distinct possibility/probability) but I would have thought it was trying to get at "some powers walk". So I figure the two options it was going for were "plural walk" and "singular walks" but it 'forgot' the a/some bit.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

My grade-school teachers were pretty good at teaching fundamentals. We learned to diagram sentences, which is a skill that would serve today's youth just as well -- it makes you think about phrases, and understand the agreement of subject and verb, and handy stuff like that. I doubt I could still remember how to do it, but I'll have to learn it again soon so I can teach my kids.

 

[Ursa major]

I'm sure I did English grammar at school, but I think we were meant to get the basics, at least in terms of terminology (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, tenses and cases) in the (compulsory) Latin lessons, probably because the examples are more obvious (or reasonable - see next paragraph) in that language than they are in English.

Just look at the Simple Present tense in day-to-day English (i.e. not fiction written in the present tense). My Oxford Everyday Grammar gives ten examples of usage; not one of them deals with the current activities of the speaker. If you say, "I walk to work," with no other qualification, anyone hearing you will understand that you mean you walk whenever you need to get to work (and return from it) rather than take the bike, bus, taxi or car. The last thing it means is that you are walking to work at that moment (which is, in any case(), the Present Continuous tense).

Now perhaps this is also true of Latin - being a poor scholar of that language, I really have no idea - but given that Latin is both foreign and somewhat dead, we were never likely to be confronted with people who would hear us talking Latin in the present tense and wonder what was wrong with us.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Word is telling me my character can't do a "backflip". She can do a "back flip", or a "backfill" or a "backslap".

Back off, Word.

 

[nightdreamer]

The stories of spelling/gammar-checking foibles are legion. I remember a case brought up in the "Abort/Retry/Fail" column of PC Magazine years ago wherein MS Word turned every occurrence of some word in a business letter into "prostitute." The writer cleverly proofread before sending.

Has anyone had experience with any grammar-checking software that is worth buying? I've looked at some reviews and am pretty much convinced that nothing qualifies.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Has anyone had experience with any grammar-checking software that is worth buying? I've looked at some reviews and am pretty much convinced that nothing qualifies.

It's not possible for a software grammar wizard to get it right all the time, so no, none worth buying.

The best way is to know the correct spelling/grammar without having to refer to a wizard, and just proofread it yourself, then get somebody else to proofread it as well afterwards. Grammar checking software is only any good for making sure you did actually get it right, or checking if you made a typo - it can't do sentence structure for you.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I remember a case brought up in the "Abort/Retry/Fail" column of PC Magazine years ago wherein MS Word turned every occurrence of some word in a business letter into "prostitute."

This just reminded me of something I found recently, going through some stuff that was my mother's. She saved newspaper clippings for all kinds of reasons, and this one was hilarious. The two pieces had come apart, and I found the "correction" one first, then a few minutes later came across the blurb that was being corrected. (It should be noted that this was in our local paper, for which I now work.)

The "correction" apologized for the inadvertent substitution of the word "woman" for the word "room" in the Republican Women's Club announcement of such-and-such date, and added that it was an accidental typo and not an attempt at humor on the part of anyone at the paper.

I found out why it might have been thought less-than-accidental when I came across the original announcement, which stated that the Republican Women's Club would be raffling off a woman for one night in a local motel with a jacuzzi.

 

[Clive R]

The jacuzzi weren't up to much!

I agree that the grammar checker is annoying, but I leave it on because sometimes, just sometimes, it's right.
Other times it makes you think, and there have been a few times that I've re-worded because of it, and the writing ends up a little better.

The thing that really annoys me though is when it tells me that a comma won't do.....yes it will because that's why I put it there!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

spartan; it was spartan, the room was spartan.

Not Spartan, of the heroic type. GRRRR all the time, it does me head in.

 

[Cynric]

I'm blind to all those squiggles now. My day job involves writing scientific papers. Enough chemical names and jargon and Word basically underlines the whole document. So I either add every third word to the dictionary or just learn to ignore them.

"that" and ", which" are my grammar pet hate, though.