Is Micrsoft word flawed?

[thehumpman]

In attempts to improve my grammar,spelling and punctuation I have been writing my stories using microsoft word. Then I go through and correct all my errors in those areas.
Yet I still got constant feedback that my grammar, spelling and punctuation are constantly in error.
So is microsoft word flawed or is everyone who visits this site a perverted english professor?
Any ideas here would be appreciated.

Thankyou thehumpman

 

[minsue]

So is microsoft word flawed?

Yes

or is everyone who visits this site a perverted english professor?

Yes

Welcome to the AH!

 

[rgraham666]

Asking if a Microsoft product is flawed is like asking if shit stinks.

Sorry humpman, making an observation, not taking a swipe at you.

 

[The_old_man]

Now you know why many writers use Wordperfect.

 

[Guest]

I must echo minsue -

Yes, MS is flawed. It rarely catches my true typos, constantly catches NON-typos, and doesn't do dick for grammatical problems (such as passive voice).

You're probably better off reading your story out loud and catching grammatical errors in that way.

As for the AH? Yep. The education and IQ levels around here remain high, standards are high, and even though we flirt constantly we are true to the craft of writing.

Have a drink.

 

[The_Fool]

I must echo minsue -

Yes, MS is flawed. It rarely catches my true typos, constantly catches NON-typos, and doesn't do dick for grammatical problems (such as passive voice).

You're probably better off reading your story out loud and catching grammatical errors in that way.

As for the AH? Yep. The education and IQ levels around here remain high, standards are high, and even though we flirt constantly we are true to the craft of writing.

Have a drink.

Au contraire.

MS Word is an excellent dildo and can under extreme conditions dick up things. It jiggles too.

I would be better off if YOU read my stories out loud to ME....you being nude of course.

I am foolish rather than edumicated and my IQ ranks right up there with a newt...

I never flirt...

I do drink....

 

[Guest]

Au contraire.

MS Word is an excellent dildo and can under extreme conditions dick up things. It jiggles too.

I would be better off if YOU read my stories out loud to ME....you being nude of course.

I am foolish rather than edumicated and my IQ ranks right up there with a newt...

I never flirt...

I do drink....

And you are so cute.

 

[Weird Harold]

In attempts to improve my grammar,spelling and punctuation I have been writing my stories using microsoft word. Then I go through and correct all my errors in those areas.
Yet I still got constant feedback that my grammar, spelling and punctuation are constantly in error.
So is microsoft word flawed or is everyone who visits this site a perverted english professor?
Any ideas here would be appreciated.

Thankyou thehumpman

MS Word's Spelling and Grammar Checks are only as good as the person using them -- as is true for Wordperfect and any other full-featured Word Processing program.

If you have the spelling and grammar check left in the default preferences and you can get it to pass an essay without any errors, then you might as well delete the essay as a boring piece of crap.

However, unlike most of the comments so far, I think you should figure out WHY the grammar and spellchecks find fault with your work.

You'll get a lot of "False Positives" with any grammar check, because English is a language that has too many peculiarities to program every possibility into an automatic grammar check.

First thing to do is turn off "check while typing" -- it will only bog things down -- especialy on big files -- and frustrate you by forgetting that you told it to ignore something.

Second, you need to turn off some of the checks -- "beginning of sentences" "Cliches" "Wordiness" and several other checks are fine checks to apply to formal business documents, but they don't apply to most fiction, where wordiness, cliches and the bad grammar of characters are an essential part of writing well.

Third, turn on the Show Readability statistics option to find the passive voice. Word only faults on the most egregious Passive Voice and then makes a generally poor suggestion on how to correct it. However, the readability statistics will count EVERY occurance of passive voice with reasonable accuracy.

Fourth, don't check the entire document at once. Check it a section at a time as part of your editing routine -- and set it to "recheck document" before you start to clear all of the ignores it recorded during the writing process. Checking a paragraph at a time will narrow down the passive voice problems with the readability statistics.

Finally, never trust either a spell check or grammar check completely. Use them as tools to help you improve your writing by analyzing what each fault is trying to tell you about your writing, but never accept the suggested changes blindly or use autocorrect.

What Word's grammar check SAYS is the problem, is seldom the case, but there is usually a valid reason for it detcting a fault.

In a recent editing session, Word kept telling me that parts of the dialogue tagging were "Sentence Fragments" while the actual problem was either missing quotation marks or improper punctuation of the dialogue.

In another editing session Word kept confusing the proper name "Frank" with the verb "to frank" the adjective "frank," and the comon noun "frank" -- It took a temporary global change of the characters name to clear up Word's confusion in that case.

If you take the time, and make the effort, to personalize the configuration so that it checks what YOU want it to look for, Word's Grammar check CAN be a very useful tool in correcting your bad habits and common errors.

Word can be customized to correct your most common typos as you type them, look for only the grammar flaws you want it to look for, accept odd or uncommon spellings that you use often, and a host of other useful things. but it MUST BE customized! the default settings are business oriented, overly strict, and highly conservative (not to mention politically correct.)

If you take the time to learn the limitations and quirks that cause "false positives" and learn to identify true positves, Word's grammar and spell check can make editing your work much easier. No program can ever replace the human mind and eye for spotting ALL errors but it can make spotting the repetitive and comon errors a lot easier.

 

[neonlyte]

Three women were sitting around talking about their husbands' performance as lovers. The first woman says ''My husband works as a marriage counsellor. He always buys me flowers and candy before we make love. I like that.''

The second woman says, ''My husband is a motorcycle mechanic. He likes to play rough and slaps me around sometimes. I kinda like that.''

The third woman just shakes her head and says, ''My husband works for Microsoft. He just sits on the edge of the bed and tells me how great it's going to be when I get it.''

 

[Boota]

I don't have any trouble with MS Word, but I don't trust it either. I do my own spellchecking and grammar checking. I have friends with a good knowledge of English go over my work, as well as the several times I go over it in hard copy. I have so many red and green lines on my page when I'm using MS Word that it seems like I'm writing a Xmas card. I just tell the program, "Fuck you! I LIKE sentence fragments!"