The linguists react.

This was posted by John Lawler from the University of Michigan on a list for linguists-

I see three points in it that I think are of interest to
linguists worldwide.

First, we could all use a better grammar-checker program, and the ultimate
intent of the 'crusade' is to stimulate linguistic research and
development, so this seems like good news for linguists and linguistics,
which is fairly unusual here as well.

Second, we can see from the surprise being shown by the American public and
the media that everybody actually *did* expect the MS Grammar Checker to
(ahem) 'Check Grammar'. This endemic ignorance is emphatically *not* good
news for linguists or linguistics. It's downright appalling.

Third, how come it's a business professor instead of a linguist?