Grammar checker rant

[HareBrain]

I was just trying to work out where the errant "of" might have come from.

I would of looked it up, but I could care less.

 

[Mouse]

HB, you could've posted some sort of warning before doing that! Nearly had my eye out. The hideousness!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would of looked it up, but I could care less.

See, it's everywhere! Arrrgh!

 

[Parson]

Parson, I suppose all 13 of those children were shiny clean, combed and brushed and dressed properly? I don't know how people do it. I'm lucky if I get to Walmart with my two kids both wearing shoes, and it's guaranteed that at least one of them will have a dirty face. I couldn't even think about church.

Absolutely! However they ranged in age from about 8-24? I don't know much about them but they must belong to a conservative Christian group. All of the women and there were 10 of them (I think) had their heads covered during the service. And sing?! I thought the rafters were going to shake. It was wondrous.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I would of looked it up, but I could care less.

Word will save the day by correcting that to "I would of looked it up, but I could careless".

 

[The Judge]

Grrr...

It's excelling itself again. Today's latest:

At the bottom of the pit a strange creature paced, looking up at him, like to the rock-statue in all but size alone, for it stood no higher than a boar.

Ignore the odd sentence construction, it's a story someone's telling. But the spell-checker is insisting there's a word wrong. Rock-statue? No. Boar.

Apparently it should be

[FONT=&quot]... it stood no higher than a bore.[/FONT]

What?! Bores come in small sizes nowadays? Try telling that to the Severn.

 

[Abernovo]

The spell-checker stood shaking when Her Honour pointed a large bore shotgun at it.

That'd teach it!

 

[RJM Corbet]

The spell-checker stood shaking when Her Honour pointed a large bore shotgun at it.

That'd teach it!

Yes, I'm sure it won't make the same mistake again ...

 

[Erin99]

Brilliant, TJ! I wonder if, when I write about a "bore" in a later chapter of my novel, Word will correct it to "boar".

Also, I see this comment from the previous page:

Oddly I came across a usage note on this whilst looking for something else in the Collins dictionary:

In standard English, "off" is not followed by of: 'he stepped off (not off of) the platform.' The use of "off" after verbs such as borrow, buy, get, as in 'I got this chair off an antique dealer', is acceptable in conversation, but should be replaced in formal writing by "from".

This says the same as what JJ taught me, which is that in a line like the one I had in my novel - "she took something off one of the gathered women" - it should read, "she took something FROM one of the gathered women". Slight difference, sure, but formal narration needs that!

Also, this:

Hmm. Interesting. I would never say "off from", for anything, so perhaps that's an American English thing for me. ...... It's possible that British English considers those all to be "from" instead. Is that the case?

...is slightly wrong, because in formal narration you'd say "I got/took/borrowed/stole/bought it FROM blah blah blah..." No "off" or "of" at all"!


Aaaaaaaand.... Word's latest blunder with me: coarse wall = course wall. I thought my character was escaping a daemon, not escaping an assault course!

 

[Ursa major]

Coarse wall....?

I know some walls have ears, but a mouth? (And a potty mouth at that....)

*shakes head*

 

[Erin99]

Ideally I'd love "rough" instead of "coarse", but my sentence is already suffering alliteration: "Jenni raked her rope over the coarse wall...". I think I might have to rewrite the line once I've finished chopping the story's word count (I'm 1800 words over the limit - eep!!!)

And I've used "bonds" instead of "rope" too much already, too...

 

[Ursa major]

Why does Word not like "can not"? It doesn't even know why it doesn't like it, as it gives no alternative.


Now I may be wrong, but while "can't", "cannot" and "can not" all mean the same thing (in general**), they're not (necessarily) pronounced the same way:

• "can't" is one syllable;
• "cannot" is two syllables, with the stress on the first one;
• "can not" is, obviously, two syllables, where either the stress is on both, or on the "not"; this could be emphasised, I suppose, by writing "can not"***.

Will it soon start complaining about one or other of "she'd not" and "she hadn't"?


** - Okay, there may be subtle differences between "can not" and "cannot", as the "not" may be emphasised in speech (or internal dialogue) to indicate that some one is not allowed to do something, rather than they're incapable of doing it.

*** - One could write, "cannot", but I tend to reserve italicising parts of words for pointing out word play (and even then, in my WiPs, I keep this to a minimum; probably ).

.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would guess it's just because the need for "can not" is pretty rare, so it assumes you mistakenly put a space there.

There is clearly a difference between the three possibilities, in implied meaning as well as emphasis:

"That can't be true." Implies denial.

"That cannot be true." Implies hard evidence.

"That can not be true," or my preference, "That can not be true." Implies denial as well, but more emphatically and flavored with evidence.

Phooey on Word! How many books has it written? (Without assistance.)

 

[The Judge]

Not Word this time, but it's making me laugh so much I had to share it.

I have a character say the following: "You are alone today?"

Unfortunately my typing skills leave something to be desired, so I got: "You are a long toady."

 

[Gary Compton]

Not Word this time, but it's making me laugh so much I had to share it.

I have a character say the following: "You are alone today?"

Unfortunately my typing skills leave something to be desired, so I got: "You are a long toady."

Your book isn't called the Life and Times of Kermit the Frog is it?

 

[Mouse]

I had: 'Seb was curled up by the door.' And grammar checker wanted me to put 'The door curled up Seb.' Now, okay, I know 'was curled up' is probably passive but at least it makes sense.

 

[Kylara]

Well here I'll just jump in (from page two hehe) I do read a lot about etymology and origins of language and stuff, and what I love most of all is that English as a language didn't have grammar like it does today until a bunch of academics of Latin and Ancient Greek felt that they knew better than everyone else and imposed the grammatical rules of Latin and Ancient Greek onto English, which is why there are so many exceptions to the "rules" of English grammar and why some of it seems weird and counter intuitive...and don't even get me started on why UK and US spelling differs...

 

[Boneman]

Mine is trying to turn me into a cockney writer today. It doesn't like:

All they know is it came from the Ironstone on the temple.

And asks that I write:

All they know is it come from the Ironstone on the temple.

And another one that made me laugh was this:

But I have decided that a man who lays himself open to ruining others by defying the Balance should not remain in Talamis

would become:

But I have decided that a man who plays himself open to ruining others by defying the Balance should not remain in Talamis


Takes self-abuse to a new level...

ps: shame I can't change the font size in... wait a minute...aah that advanced - always forget it!

 

[prizzley]

My grammar checker insists I've used the wrong verb in, "She spat in his face." It prefers, "She sat in his face."

Sorry, grammar checker, if she'd wanted to sit in his face, she wouldn't have spat in it!

 

[Boneman]

That 50 shades of grey creeps in everywhere...

This isn't a spell-checker rant, but its equivalent. I was getting kind of tired; you know, when your brain can't think of simple words, and I wanted to say "Marcus spent time gathering information." but I'm in a medieval world, and I couldn't think of a better olde word, so I consulted my thesaurus - chose English United Kingdom, and typed 'information' in. As an alternative, my computer suggested:

in order
in sequence
in turn
in a rank
in a row

Now I know what you're thinking: he must have left space = in formation, which is what I thought. So I typed it again and got the same response. Did it three times, and got the same response each time. Maybe my laptop is tired, too.