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Originally Posted by JustinThought
This tool flagged many "grammatical" and "spelling" errors which (<--there's one of 'em!--Word suggested "that") if changed, would change the entire feel of the story!
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As BetterRed said, the Grammar Checks are mostly advisory.
The "that" <-> "which" is a slight difference between American/British English. Even within American English, it is divided into two camps (those who are against using them interchangeably, and those who are for it). For example, here is one of the questions/answers on the English Stack Exchange:
https://english.stackexchange.com/qu...se-which/15216
Also, the English language evolves... so let us say you were working on a book from the 1930s, "which" could have been the "proper"/"more formal" form of grammar back then, but the style has shifted, and the other method became more popular in the present.
That/Which is one of those Grammar Checks in Word that(which?) I just completely ignore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BetterRed
If you have a clean conversion, i.e. one not riddled with OCR scanning errors then, particularly for fiction, why would you even check the spelling, let alone check the grammar and style. As you alluded, regional, and historical cant etc are often essential to the story, especially its humour.
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The occasional typo can still slip through (even actual typos in the physical book).
For example, I just caught these using Word's Grammar Check in the latest book I am converting ("he" -> "be"):
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Such rebellion can he quelled only by force and violence or by control over the rebel’s means of livelihood.
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or hard-to-catch mistakes like this ("not" -> "no"):
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I predict to you that the time is coming in Sheboygan County, after these people learn the lesson they have coming to them, that it will not longer be necessary for us to have large picket lines either.
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"from" -> "form":
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The conclusion to be drawn from the evidence surveyed in this chapter is that the causes of the evils which the Committee has found are two—violence and economic compulsion in the from of closed-shop and union-shop agreements.
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And Spellcheck is also helpful to catch typos in strange (typically last) names:
Actual: Abraham Teitelbaum
Index (Typo):
Tietelbaum, Abraham
Even if you had hawk eyes, these types of errors could easily slip through, even on a thorough read... which is where the tools come in with an assist!
And computers do much better at taking the document as an entire whole (Ignore All).
Quote:
Originally Posted by BetterRed
Non-fiction is a bit different, US English grammar can be sometimes be awkward or ambiguous to a non-US English reader, and vice versa of course. Example, because it grates on my sensitive UK English ears, for non-fiction I use a Word exclusion list that includes the word 'gotten'  But I decide what to do about them on a case-by-case basis. |
The latest grammar difference I ran across is "in future" (British) and "in the future" (American). The British one just sounds completely wrong to me, but those darn British probably feel the same way!