Re: Grammar checking tool

[Barb Philbrick <barb -dot- philbrick -at- PCOHIO -dot- COM>]

RG>Matthew Wong wanted to know about other people's experience with
RG>grammar checkers.

RG>I was offered a copy of Grammatik, which I used for a while.  It
RG>annoyed me immensely by failing to deal with any sentence containing
RG>a section in brackets (like this one), treating the first, middle and
RG>end sections as three sentences, all of which it thought were faulty.
RG>It also kept displaying a message box claiming that "This sentence
RG>may contain a passive construction", or some similar wording.  I
RG>don't have a degree in English, but I'm reasonably competent, and I
RG>couldn't see the problem nine times out of ten.

FYI - you can turn the passive voice check off in Grammatik.

My problem with grammar checkers is that the ones I've used don't check
noun-verb agreement if they are separated. This (to me, anyway) is one
of the harder things to catch on a proofread.

They are definitely no substitute for a human, but I like to run stuff
through them every so often just to practice tightening up my writing. I
turn on all the checks, and try to reword as much as possible to make
the grammar checker happy. It usually results in some of the text being
simpler - if it can make a grammar checker happy, it's got short
sentences, active voice, and all that other good stuff. Grammar checking
also forces me to examine my sentence structures so I know why I
disagree with its advice.

Barb

barb -dot- philbrick -at- pcohio -dot- com
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