Welcome,
Overview
I knew Microsoft Word’s
“Spelling and Grammar Check” feature was bad.
However, I never realized how bad this feature really was until a
student turned in a poorly written report that was “spellchecked” and
“grammarchecked”. I have since tested
this feature out hundreds of times. My
conclusion is that the “Spelling and Grammar Check” feature on Microsoft Word
is extraordinarily
bad (especially the Grammar check part).
It is so bad that I am surprised that it is even being offered and I
question the
ethics of including a feature
that is this bad on a product that is so widely used.
A Colleague Observes- I have always found it interesting that the message we
receive after the spelling and grammar are checked reads: The spelling and
grammar check is complete. To me these
are two different types of checking and in my opinion the message should
read "the spelling and grammar
checks are complete." [Thanks, Neosha Mackey]
Show me the Demos
Download these files and run
“Spelling and Grammar Check” on your word processing software. If you have your own examples, please e-mail
me. I will add them here.
Demofile.doc
[This works for Microsoft Word 2002.]
Demofile2.doc [This works for Microsoft Word 2003, Word for
Mac.]
Original
demo [This is a shorter
version. It is in text format. Copy and
paste to your word processing software and run “Spelling and Grammar Check”.]
ESL
examples [Taken from http://writing.colostate.edu/wcenter/wchandbook.htm]
Gag
e-mail from friend [My friend, Ron Tilden, sent me this gag e-mail after I
sent out the original demo. It goes
through fine.]
Contribution
from reader (Jim Whiting)
Scholarly Work on this Topic
McGee, Tim and
Patricia Ericsson (2002), “The Politics Of The Program: MS Word As The
Invisible Grammarian”, Computers and
Composition, 19, 453–470.
Abstract: Because
of its widespread availability to writing students, the grammar and style
checker in MS word deserves a thorough critique. Although recent scholarship
has addressed general issues surrounding grammar and style checkers, we
investigate this particular program in depth, focusing on its theoretical
underpinnings. We contrast the approaches to grammar and style embodied in the
software with those found in current composition pedagogy and conclude with
suggestions that go beyond customizing the Grammar Checker to advocating more
thorough discussions of the very notions of stylistic and grammatical
correctness.
Burston, Jack,
“A Comparative Evaluation Of French Grammar Checkers”, Calico Journal, 13(2
&3), 104-111, Available at- http://calico.org/journalarticles/Volume13/vol13-2and3/Burston.pdf.
Garfinkel, R,
Fernandez, and Gopal, R. D.(2003), "Design of an Interactive Spell
Checker: Optimizing the List of Offered Words," Decision Support Systems,
pp. 385-397,
Vol. 35.
My
name is Sandeep Krishnamurthy. I teach at the University
of Washington’s Bothell campus. My
office is about 10 miles away from Redmond, WA.
This is how you say my name- Sandeep Krishnamurthy.
No. I am not.
Competing products do not seem to do much better. WordPerfect, for instance, catches one
sentence in the original demo- but does not offer a better alternative. My hope is that this exercise will convince
Microsoft to invest money in improving this feature. I believe Microsoft has the ability to
improve this feature and I hope it exercises it. In fact, I hope everybody (including
OpenOffice) works on improving Grammar checks.
I
already have shared it with some colleagues.
My hope is that you can help me disseminate this to a wide
audience. I am especially concerned
about children in K-12 settings using this feature instead of learning the
basics of grammar. This is what a few of
my colleagues had to say-
“This
is shocking.”
“I
used MS Word 2000. I thought that the
grammar check would surely catch something.
It did not! Amazing. You should send this to MS, Gates, and CNN!”
I
used Microsoft Word 2002 SP3 to run the Spelling and Grammar check on
Demofile.doc. I used Microsoft Word 2003
(11.6113.5703) [Part of Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003] to check
Demofile2.doc. Try running it on other
programs in other computing environments.
The files were tested in two ways
(opening the file and copying and pasting the text into a new document). I did this because of a problem with the way
this feature works. I was alerted to
this by a wise friend in an e-mail-
“I tried grammar-checking your
demofile.doc file in Microsoft Word on my Mac this evening. Something
interesting happened. First, I
downloaded the file and opened it in Word for Mac. It didn't detect any grammar
problem, just as you would expect. Then,
however, I remembered something: If the user chooses to ignore detected
mistakes when first running spellcheck and grammarcheck on a Word file, the
spellcheck/grammarcheck doesn't detect those mistakes when the user runs the
tool a second time. It assumes the user wanted to ignore them. I wondered if
that was happening with your test file. Perhaps the test file was
"remembering" that the spellcheck and grammarcheck had already been
completed. So, I pasted the text into a new Word file, essentially resetting
things, and ran the tool again. In fact, it caught a few of the grammar
mistakes -- certainly not most of them, but a few.”
No. I am not saying that word processing
technology is bad. I think all of us
should continue to use this feature.
However, I hope we remember to print out what we type and go over it
carefully before sending it on. These
technologies can help us write better.
But, there are no substitutes for critical thinking and manual
editing.
Absolutely. Forward this link- http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep/check-
to everyone you know. Fellow educators,
feel free to e-mail this to your students, add to your syllabus and use in
class.