🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr8.145417.2159@ccu.umanitoba.ca> umcho000@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Connie Cho) writes:
>In article <12392@umd5.umd.edu> amunn@macbeth.umd.edu (Alan Munn)
 writes:

[loads deleted about dependent/dependant and part of speech]

>>Perhaps what really is needed is
>>a real dictionary editor, so that we can create our own dictionarys
>>fairly easily.  Don't tell me Nisis has one... :-) 
>>
>>
>>Alan Munn
>
>Ah, now what you are looking at is no longer the spelling checker,
>but is the grammar checker. I don't use Word anymore, and haven't
>seen Word 5, but I suppose I should ask whether Word 5's
>grammar checker can catch the 'dependent' vs. 'dependant' uses.


I most certainly am *not* looking for one. :)  Just on a whim I ran the
text of a paper of mine currently in press through Grammatik Mac.
Apart from balking at all uses of 'rather' (It only thinks it's a
wishy-wash intensifier *rather* than something else), the program also
proceeded to inform me that all of my relative clauses were
ungrammatical because I had used 'which' in some rather than 'that'.
I'm a linguist, so I actually know a little bit about relative
clauses, so this shocked me quite a bit.  It seems to me that the
progam only found one or two 'real' errors in the text (repeated
'the's for example) yet found loads of other problems which (that?)
would only cause to confuse someone not fairly well versed in English
grammar to begin with.

Actually I found the whole exercise quite amusing, but other than the
entertainment value :) I wouldn't ever use one, nor recommend it to
someone else.


>BTW, the speller does catch 'independant', doesn't it?

Don't know, I've never mispelt it!

Alan

>
>CKC