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(San)deep's World. Wise observations from Prof. Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor of Marketing and E-Commerce, author, educator, Dad, coach, racquetball player, evangelist, speaker and thinker.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Microsoft Word Spelling and Grammar Check

Microsoft Word Spelling and Grammar Check Demonstration
Sandeep Krishnamurthy
http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep
http://sandeepworld.blogspot.com


Too often, college students feel that running the “Spelling and Grammar check” feature on Microsoft Word is sufficient to ensure good writing. The paragraph shown below is designed to pass these checks. You can judge the quality of writing for yourself!

---------------------------Demonstration Paragraph Begins----------------------------

Marketing are bad for brand. McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ are good brand. Finance good for marketing. 4P’s are marketing mix. I use marketing mixes for good marketing. Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets make good brand. Gates do good marketing in Microsoft. Gates build the big brand in Microsoft. The Gates is leader of big company in Washington. Warren buffet do awesome job in marketing. Buffet eat buffet.

---------------------------Demonstration Paragraph Ends------------------------------


[I used Microsoft Word 2002 SP3 to run the Spelling and Grammar check. Please try it on your computer and tell me what happens. I would love to hear from WordPerfect and OpenOffice users as well.]

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

openoffice.org flags "McDonalds" and Internets" as misspellings. (it suggests "McDonald's" and "Internees" or "Internet", respectively) OpenOffice.org has no grammar checker

Anonymous said...

Microsoft word indeed returns no errors. (I'm using Office 2000)

Word Perfect 9 (a fairly old version as well), returns several errors:

1: Marketing are bad for brand. If Marketing is the subject of the berb are, try making them agree in number

2:McDonalds (same as above)

3: Finace good for marketing: Normally an adjective like good doesn't modify a verb. Try the adverb form, or check for missing words

4: Internets do good jobs: An article or other modifier usually precedes the word job. Check also for erros in hyphenation, possessive form, capitalization and modifier agreement

5: The Gates is leader of big company in Washington: (same error as #4)

6: Warren buffet do awesome job in marketing: If buffet is an appositive or Warren is a direct address, consider setting that phrase of with commans; Check also for a missing possessive. Normaly an adjective like awesome doesn't modify a verb, try the adverb form or check for hissing words;

7: Buffet eat buffet: If buffet is the subject of the verb eat, try making them agree in number;

not much help, but at least it found that there were errors.

Anonymous said...

I put the text through WordPerfect 12 grammar checker, and decided to choose from the suggestions it made. The result doesn't really make any more sense than the original text, but WP 12 spotted quite a lot of grammar mistakes (practically the same than the previous poster reported). Well, of course WP wasn't able to read meaning into the nonsense):

"Marketing is bad for brand. McDonald is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonald’ is good brand. Finance well for marketing. 4P’s are marketing mix. I use marketing mixes for good marketing. Interests do good jobs. Interest help marketing. Interest makes good brand. Gates do good marketing in Microsoft. Gates build the big brand in Microsoft. The Gates is the leader of big company in Washington. Warren‘s buffet does awesome jobs in marketing. Buffets eat buffets."

BTW: You may ask the OpenOffice.org community to improve their grammar checker - but only after they included one! :-)

Anonymous said...

"Gates do good marketing in Microsoft" is grammar correct. Don't confuse grammar with language understanding. The latter is still challenging for humans as well.

John Baughman said...

Found nothing MS Word 2003 wrong...

Had to do it, the subject was just sitting there...

But really, MS Word 2003 found nothing wrong with this paragraph.

Anonymous said...

Microsoft Office Word 2003 Found NOTHING WRONG!!! So much for spelling and grammar checkers!

Anonymous said...

I have long wondered on what basis the computer industry keeps predicting viable AI and expert systems in the near term when it can't even produce a passable grammar checker.

Anonymous said...

Four you’re attention I send. I be righter and have notice problem often even more. Thyme and thyme again and even moor then that I heave notice the spell checker not gone to find mistakes and grammar worse then spell.
Take four instant the paragraph at hand.

You are absolutely correct. If you already know the basic rules of grammar and spelling, the checker functions can be helpful. Woe to the poor soul though who writes something like I did above. It passes with flying colors.
You suggest what? Teaching children grammar? Oh no, no, no. This is 2005 and we don’t want to discourage the little darlings from becoming creative! Well, I am here at the age of 59 years to tell you that grammar was drilled into my (and my classmates) brains relentlessly, and my generation doesn’t appear to be lacking in creative thought.
I write and design for a living and parse a sentence too–though why exactly I would want to do that I can’t imagine. Just think how much more we could teach in our colleges and universities if we didn’t have to teach our students things they should have learned in elementary school.

Anonymous said...

Most of the problems in the original article are the result of an initial capital letter.
It is expecting a bit much of a grammar checker to correctly interpret both of the following:
"Gates have been left open in the past"
and
"Gates has been less than open in the past"
It is largely for this reason that grammar checkers, by necessity, refrain from attempting to pass judgement as to whether words beginning with a capital letter are singular or plural.

I am not an apologist for grammar checkers: I hate them (or rather, the way they are used) with a passion, but it is not a fair attack to exploit so many instances of a single, unavoidable weakness.
MS Word's grammar checker has many avoidable weaknesses.

Andrew Troup

Unknown said...

Great article, I tried this in Languagetool v0.91
which is an extension providing grammar checking for OpenOffice, seems to have done the best so far:

Starting check in English... 1. Line 1, column 10 Message: Possible agreement error - use third-person verb forms for singular and mass nouns: is. Correction: is Context: Marketing are bad for brand. McDonalds is good brand....

2. Line 1, column 22 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a brand, the brand. Correction: a brand; the brand Context: Marketing are bad for brand. McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is...

3. Line 1, column 42 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ...rketing are bad for brand. McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s a...

4. Line 1, column 42 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ...rketing are bad for brand. McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s a...

5. Line 1, column 68 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ... McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ ...

6. Line 1, column 68 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ... McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ ...

7. Line 1, column 95 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ...cDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ are good brand. Finance goo...

8. Line 1, column 122 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ...Donald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ are good brand. Finance good for marketing. 4P’s are m...

9. Line 1, column 241 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good job, the good job. Correction: a good job; the good job Context: ... mixes for good marketing. Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets ma...

10. Line 1, column 241 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good job, the good job. Correction: a good job; the good job Context: ... mixes for good marketing. Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets ma...

11. Line 1, column 266 Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: to market or market. Correction: to market; market Context: .... Internets do good job. Internets help marketing. Internets make good brand. Gates do go...

12. Line 1, column 292 Message: The article is missing before the noun: a good brand, the good brand. Correction: a good brand; the good brand Context: ...nternets help marketing. Internets make good brand. Gates do good marketing in Microsoft. ...

13. Line 1, column 348 Message: The proper name in singular (Gates) must be used with a third person verb: builds. Correction: builds Context: ...s do good marketing in Microsoft. Gates build the big brand in Microsoft. The Gates i...

14. Line 1, column 392 Message: Possible agreement error. You should probably use: are. Correction: are Context: ...d the big brand in Microsoft. The Gates is leader of big company in Washington. Wa...

Time: 117ms (including 3ms for rule matching) Check done, 14 potential problems found

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Alexis said...

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