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Zhuk Posted 18 years ago
Linguistics Studies
"Many a", Joining two subjects with "And" and MS Word.
Hi guys,
I am trying to determine what MS Word captures as grammatical issue and what is not. Just out of curiosity. I am taking example sentences from “The Gregg Reference Manual” and checking them in MS Word. It is able to recognize some grammatical issues but not all.
I understand that MS Word in not perfect, and I am not offering to discus how good or bad it is. However, that would be interesting to see a list of what is defiantly not (or could not be) recognized by this software.
My apology, if it was discussed here already, please post a link if it is so.
For example, theoretically MS Word cannot capture the issue in following sentence:
“Our teacher of English and friend are Mr. Bruce.”
As it has no sense, that “teacher of English” and “friend” both are referring to the same person and there should be used “is” instead.
I think it is good policy to do not offer any suggestions by MS Word in such cases as it should be spotted by the writer himself.
Here is another example that completely confuses MS Word:
“Many a woman and man has responded to our plea of contributions.”
MS Word complains that “has” needs to be changed with “have”, but according to GRM:
1002.c
Use a singular verb when two or more subjects connected by and are preceded by each, every, many a, or many an.
I am not sure why MS Word is not recognizing it, as programmatically it is easy to catch. More over it offers a wrong suggestion based on GRM.
Therefore, here comes my first question:
Is it grammatically “more” correct to use “have” instead of “has” in that last example? In other words, who is right? (I bet that is GRM, but will ask any way)
Please post here anything weird you noticed related to how MS Word checks the grammar.
I am trying to determine what MS Word captures as grammatical issue and what is not. Just out of curiosity. I am taking example sentences from “The Gregg Reference Manual” and checking them in MS Word. It is able to recognize some grammatical issues but not all.
I understand that MS Word in not perfect, and I am not offering to discus how good or bad it is. However, that would be interesting to see a list of what is defiantly not (or could not be) recognized by this software.
My apology, if it was discussed here already, please post a link if it is so.
For example, theoretically MS Word cannot capture the issue in following sentence:
“Our teacher of English and friend are Mr. Bruce.”
As it has no sense, that “teacher of English” and “friend” both are referring to the same person and there should be used “is” instead.
I think it is good policy to do not offer any suggestions by MS Word in such cases as it should be spotted by the writer himself.
Here is another example that completely confuses MS Word:
“Many a woman and man has responded to our plea of contributions.”
MS Word complains that “has” needs to be changed with “have”, but according to GRM:
1002.c
Use a singular verb when two or more subjects connected by and are preceded by each, every, many a, or many an.
I am not sure why MS Word is not recognizing it, as programmatically it is easy to catch. More over it offers a wrong suggestion based on GRM.
Therefore, here comes my first question:
Is it grammatically “more” correct to use “have” instead of “has” in that last example? In other words, who is right? (I bet that is GRM, but will ask any way)
Please post here anything weird you noticed related to how MS Word checks the grammar.
Top answer
Welcome to EF, Zhuk There is no unanimous "correct" reply to your last question. As a rule, English is very flexible and in many cases liberal grammarians accept more than one alternative while some others insist on only one that they think is right. I would go for has , like you.
- Welcome to EF, Zhuk There is no unanimous "correct" reply to your last question.
- As a rule, English is very flexible and in many cases liberal grammarians accept more than one alternative while some others insist on only one that they think is right.
- I would go for has , like you.
- "Our teacher of English and friend are Mr.
- ” As for the above sentence, in English the word order is extremely fixed because there are so few inflections.
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3 Answers
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Welcome to EF, Zhuk
There is no unanimous "correct" reply to your last question. As a rule, English is very flexible and in many cases liberal grammarians accept more than one alternative while some others insist on only one that they think is right. I would go for has, like you.
"Our teacher of English and friend are Mr. Bruce.”
As for the above sentence, in English
There is no unanimous "correct" reply to your last question. As a rule, English is very flexible and in many cases liberal grammarians accept more than one alternative while some others insist on only one that they think is right. I would go for has, like you.
"Our teacher of English and friend are Mr. Bruce.”
As for the above sentence, in English
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Thanks for reply!
Can you please tell what works best for you when you check grammar? Is that paper-and-pen approach?
For me personally sometimes it is hard to check my own texts, the same way as it happens with programmers who have problems with debugging their own code. One is presuming a lot in the back of ones mind and even knowing perfectly all the rules
Can you please tell what works best for you when you check grammar? Is that paper-and-pen approach?
For me personally sometimes it is hard to check my own texts, the same way as it happens with programmers who have problems with debugging their own code. One is presuming a lot in the back of ones mind and even knowing perfectly all the rules
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AnonymousCan you please tell what works best for you when you check grammar?I have no special method. I just read what I have written and hopefully anything totally wrong will jar in my ear pretty much the same way a wrong note in music does. If I am writing something really serious, I analyze my language thoughtfully word for word.
CB
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