subjunctive mood and Microsoft

[Hagrinas Mivali]

If I were to type this sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were
gone, Word would tell me that this sentence is wrong. It would suggest that
I use the indicative mood instead. Its reasoning is that I have a problem
with subject-verb agreement. My use of the subjunctive in the second
sentence is not an issue for obvious reasons. It doesn't actually say that I
should change from the subjunctive to the indicative, but it is effectively
telling writers that they are wrong if they don't do so.



I did a search on the archives of alt.usage.english. I found a post that
said that this problem existed back in Word 97. I find it hard to fathom
that this problem could exist for so long and Microsoft is not addressing
it. What are others doing? Is it up to all users to get an add-on product
for basic grammar checking? I would not want my kids to have to rely on
something like this when doing a report. Is their any way we can let
Microsoft know that there grammar checker does not understand basic grammar?
Is there a reason that Word did not complain about my previous sentence?
It's bad enough when they miss an error, but when they tell writers to
introduce errors into their writing, that's pretty bad.



By the way, if I don't care about dividend taxes, Microsoft is just fine
with the first sentence. Go figure.

 

[John Lawler]

If I were to type this sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were
gone, Word would tell me that this sentence is wrong. It would suggest that
I use the indicative mood instead. Its reasoning is that I have a problem
with subject-verb agreement. My use of the subjunctive in the second
sentence is not an issue for obvious reasons. It doesn't actually say that I
should change from the subjunctive to the indicative, but it is effectively
telling writers that they are wrong if they don't do so.

I did a search on the archives of alt.usage.english. I found a post that
said that this problem existed back in Word 97. I find it hard to fathom
that this problem could exist for so long and Microsoft is not addressing
it. What are others doing? Is it up to all users to get an add-on product
for basic grammar checking? I would not want my kids to have to rely on
something like this when doing a report. Is their any way we can let
Microsoft know that there grammar checker does not understand basic grammar?
Is there a reason that Word did not complain about my previous sentence?
It's bad enough when they miss an error, but when they tell writers to
introduce errors into their writing, that's pretty bad.

By the way, if I don't care about dividend taxes, Microsoft is just fine
with the first sentence. Go figure.

Yes, it is up to the users, and no, there isn't anything they can do about
it except learn to notice grammar mistakes or -- better -- not to make them
in the first place.

There isn't any 'grammar checker' available that works. Period.

Grammar checking is *hard*. A *real* grammar checker, that parsed any
sentence and compared its parse to a database of solecisms or prohibited
forms, would be ten times bigger and slower than Word (at least) and
probably couldn't run at all on anything smaller than a Sun network.
At least the only decent production parser I know of doesn't.
Try writing one sometime and you'll begin to see why.

The only reason people think that it ought to be an addon to Word is that
they don't really know enough about grammar to understand what's entailed in
'checking' it. Of course that doesn't exculpate Microsoft for telling
people that that horrible excrescence (the second thing you should turn off
in Office, after the Paper Clip) is really a grammar checker. But, as is
well known, they think people will believe anything.

Sorry.

-John Lawler U of Michigan Linguistics Dept
http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/disclaimers.html
#include disclaimers.h

 

[Alec McKenzie]

Is their any way we can let
Microsoft know that there grammar checker does not understand basic grammar?

I doubt whether *there* is any way that *their* spelling checker would
either!

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

I doubt whether *there* is any way that *their* spelling checker would
either!

That there is a good point.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I couldn't have put it better myself. "Check spelling as you type" alerts me
to (some of) my occasional (well, okay, I'll admit it, frequent) typos, but
I would never explicitly run the spelling checker (too much time wasted
telling it, "Yes, yes, that's all right, go on"), and I would *never* allow
the grammar checker near my prose!

 

[Ben Zimmer]

Grammar checking is *hard*.

Let's go shopping!

(Somebody had to say it.)

 

[Mike Lyle]

I couldn't have put it better myself. "Check spelling as you type"
alerts me to (some of) my occasional (well, okay, I'll admit it,
frequent) typos, but I would never explicitly run the spelling
checker (too much time wasted telling it, "Yes, yes, that's all
right, go on"), and I would *never* allow the grammar checker near my
prose!

On the whole I agree with you: but it's written for idiots, after
all. But it can alert me to my typing errors, and that's good. One
thing that it might, perhaps, quite easily have been written to do is
alert you to when you're writing to a bottom-posting newsgroup*: in a
complex thread that can screw things up badly. Though Usenet is not
an insignificant part of the Internet, MS don't give it much thought:
I cherish the hope, but not the expectation, that this will change.

*"Hey! [Blink, blink, squirm in a way Americans unaccountably find
cute] Kinda looks like you're wriding to [line feed, tab, insert
bullet] Usenet! [Wriggle] Could you use some help, here? [Insert date
the wrong way round because you brushed <enter> or something] [line
feed, tab, insert bullet] Summathem jerks, like, [tab] _care_ which
way up [Wink suggestively] the messages [new page, number top right,
underline in red] go. [Wag tail] I could check out the sideways [tab,
insert figure 2] carets [line feed, tab, insert bullet, change font
to one you used on Thursday for a joke in a letter to your sister]
for you if you'd like, [line feed, insert bullet, underline] and get
back to you on this, huh? [Blink, flop ear, stick arse in air and
wriggle, blink]"

Mike.

 

[Hagrinas Mivali]

grammar?

I doubt whether *there* is any way that *their* spelling checker would
either!

Did you read the sentence I had right after that? Quoting it out of context
makes it look like an error.

Speaking of the spell checker, Word had a history of giving suggestions for
words without trying to find out if they were already correct or not. It
used to alert users about a missing apostrophe when the user used its spell
checker for sentences such as this one. In all fairness, the explanation of
the problem merely pointed out commonly confused words, but it's not as if
the spell checker told the user to pick one from a list. It merely offered
up the alternative. They finally got that fixed. I can no longer say that
the cow was wearing it's glasses without getting scolded. But I have to
wonder how many people made that mistake solely because Word suggested it.

 

[Martin Ambuhl]

If I were to type this sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were
gone, Word would tell me that this sentence is wrong. It would suggest that
I use the indicative mood instead.

If you change the sentence to the correct "If I were to type this
sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were gone, Word would tell
me that this sentence to be wrong," Word doesn't object, does it?

 

[Hagrinas Mivali]

If you change the sentence to the correct "If I were to type this
sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were gone, Word would tell
me that this sentence to be wrong," Word doesn't object, does it?

I'll take your word for it, but it's not relevant. It doesn't change the
fact that in the sentence I gave, Word considered something an error that
was not.

Furthermore, it's just as easy to find a reference that says not to use the
subjunctive in that final instance as the other way around. I find it
awkward there. I'd call it optional at best, and overly pedantic and stuffy
at worst. So using the indicative there should not cause Word to think
something else is an error.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Altough alt.usage.english may be a bottom-posting NG,
microsoft.public.word.application.errors, to which the message was
cross-posted, and where I am reading this, is by and large a top-posting NG.

I couldn't have put it better myself. "Check spelling as you type"
alerts me to (some of) my occasional (well, okay, I'll admit it,
frequent) typos, but I would never explicitly run the spelling
checker (too much time wasted telling it, "Yes, yes, that's all
right, go on"), and I would *never* allow the grammar checker near my
prose!

On the whole I agree with you: but it's written for idiots, after
all. But it can alert me to my typing errors, and that's good. One
thing that it might, perhaps, quite easily have been written to do is
alert you to when you're writing to a bottom-posting newsgroup*: in a
complex thread that can screw things up badly. Though Usenet is not
an insignificant part of the Internet, MS don't give it much thought:
I cherish the hope, but not the expectation, that this will change.

*"Hey! [Blink, blink, squirm in a way Americans unaccountably find
cute] Kinda looks like you're wriding to [line feed, tab, insert
bullet] Usenet! [Wriggle] Could you use some help, here? [Insert date
the wrong way round because you brushed <enter> or something] [line
feed, tab, insert bullet] Summathem jerks, like, [tab] _care_ which
way up [Wink suggestively] the messages [new page, number top right,
underline in red] go. [Wag tail] I could check out the sideways [tab,
insert figure 2] carets [line feed, tab, insert bullet, change font
to one you used on Thursday for a joke in a letter to your sister]
for you if you'd like, [line feed, insert bullet, underline] and get
back to you on this, huh? [Blink, flop ear, stick arse in air and
wriggle, blink]"

Mike.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Since the version you gave is *not* correct, I would hope that the grammar
checker would object!

 

[Skitt]

Altough alt.usage.english may be a bottom-posting NG,
microsoft.public.word.application.errors, to which the message was
cross-posted, and where I am reading this, is by and large a
top-posting NG.

.... and therein lies one of the problems with crossposting.

(Sorry, for bottom-posting this to your group. I will post there no
longer.)

 

[Hagrinas Mivali]

Since the version you gave is *not* correct, I would hope that the grammar
checker would object!

But it didn't, according to him.

 

[Martin Ambuhl]

Since the version you gave is *not* correct, I would hope that the grammar
checker would object!

On what grounds do you make your illiterate claim?

 

[Bill Bonde ( ``This is the Battle of Epping Forest]

Grammar checking is *hard*. A *real* grammar checker, that parsed any
sentence and compared its parse to a database of solecisms or prohibited
forms, would be ten times bigger and slower than Word (at least) and
probably couldn't run at all on anything smaller than a Sun network.
At least the only decent production parser I know of doesn't.
Try writing one sometime and you'll begin to seewhy.

How about a spell checker that asks you if you are sure about homonyms,
providing definitions of all forms and letting you easily choose? There
is nothing difficult about doing that.



--
"...and least of all would have believed that in time of deadly need men
could die at arm’s length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not
know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen
showed in vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving crept
away to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the open
sacks untouched.", Rudyard Kipling, "William the Conquerer"

 

[Mxsmanic]

If I were to type this sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were
gone, Word would tell me that this sentence is wrong. It would suggest that
I use the indicative mood instead. Its reasoning is that I have a problem
with subject-verb agreement. My use of the subjunctive in the second
sentence is not an issue for obvious reasons. It doesn't actually say that I
should change from the subjunctive to the indicative, but it is effectively
telling writers that they are wrong if they don't do so.

Good writers don't need Microsoft to tell them how to write in English;
bad writers can probably use all the help they can get.

 

[Mike Lyle]

Oh dear! I suppose that means Bill Gates will never read my send-up
after all.

Mike.

Altough alt.usage.english may be a bottom-posting NG,
microsoft.public.word.application.errors, to which the message was
cross-posted, and where I am reading this, is by and large a
top-posting NG.

I couldn't have put it better myself. "Check spelling as you type"
alerts me to (some of) my occasional (well, okay, I'll admit it,
frequent) typos, but I would never explicitly run the spelling
checker (too much time wasted telling it, "Yes, yes, that's all
right, go on"), and I would *never* allow the grammar checker

near
my

prose!

On the whole I agree with you: but it's written for idiots, after
all. But it can alert me to my typing errors, and that's good. One
thing that it might, perhaps, quite easily have been written to do is
alert you to when you're writing to a bottom-posting newsgroup*: in a
complex thread that can screw things up badly. Though Usenet is not
an insignificant part of the Internet, MS don't give it much thought:
I cherish the hope, but not the expectation, that this will change.

*"Hey! [Blink, blink, squirm in a way Americans unaccountably find
cute] Kinda looks like you're wriding to [line feed, tab, insert
bullet] Usenet! [Wriggle] Could you use some help, here? [Insert date
the wrong way round because you brushed <enter> or something] [line
feed, tab, insert bullet] Summathem jerks, like, [tab] _care_ which
way up [Wink suggestively] the messages [new page, number top right,
underline in red] go. [Wag tail] I could check out the sideways [tab,
insert figure 2] carets [line feed, tab, insert bullet, change font
to one you used on Thursday for a joke in a letter to your sister]
for you if you'd like, [line feed, insert bullet, underline] and get
back to you on this, huh? [Blink, flop ear, stick arse in air and
wriggle, blink]"

Mike.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I note that you have snipped the text in question so that no one can make
anything out of this post. I could provide my credentials and a detailed
explanation of the grammar involved, but I prefer to spend my time helping
users of Microsoft Word than to wade back through the NG to find your
previous post.

 

[Lars Enderin]

I note that you have snipped the text in question so that no one can make
anything out of this post. I could provide my credentials and a detailed
explanation of the grammar involved, but I prefer to spend my time helping
users of Microsoft Word than to wade back through the NG to find your
previous post.

Martin wrote:
If you change the sentence to the correct "If I were to type this
sentence into Word 2003, and dividend taxes were gone, Word would tell
me that this sentence to be wrong," Word doesn't object, does it?

(Since you top-post, and your signature precedes the cited text, my news
reader (Thunderbird) did not include the signature and the following
text in the editing window...)