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Grammar Be Good
If spelling is drunken, grammar is a hallucination. Oh, I could rant on this for
hours. Suffice it to say, no matter what the grammarians think, English is not
Latin. It can’t be. Latin usually has one, very proper way to say something.
English has many ways and many words with which to express the same
thought. That’s why English is so poetic. That’s why so-called English gram-
mar has so many exceptions that it’s silly to make any rules.
Regardless of what I think, Word does come with a grammar checker, and it
does, at times, underline suspicious words or phrases with an angry green
zigzag. It’s your clue that you’ve somehow offended Word’s sense of gram-
matical justice.
As with a spelling error, right-click the green-underlined text. The pop-up
menu that appears either explains why the sentence is wrong or offers an
alternative sentence that you can choose. There’s also an option to ignore
the error, which I find myself using quite a bit.
When you select About This Sentence from the pop-up menu, the Office
e
Help system attempts to explain which part of the English Language
e
Book of Rules you offended.
Sometimes you may be puzzled about what the grammar checker finds
s
wrong. Don’t give up! Always check your entire sentence for a potential
error. For example, the grammar checker may suggest had in place of
have. Chances are, have is correct but some other word in the sentence
nce
has an unwanted s attached.
It’s possible to customize or even turn off grammar checking. Refer to
o
the section “Customizing Proofing Options,” later in this document.
Proofing Your Entire Document at Once
Before the days of on-the-fly spell checking, you proofed your document by
entering a special spell-check mode. In spell-check mode, the computer
would read your document, from top to bottom, and alert you to any goofy
words it found. You can still use this type of proofing, which some folks find
easier to handle and less disruptive than automatic spell checking. Here’s
how it’s done:
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Part II: Word Processing Basics