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Microsoft Grammar and Style Checker (‘Consider Revising’)

Another in a series of invitations to contribute to questions studied by the ‘Bridging the Unbridgeable Project’ at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Extract

I had never given much consideration to the influence of the Microsoft Word grammar and style checker on the average Microsoft Word user. Perhaps that is because I never felt quite bothered by it; as someone who has studied English for almost twenty years now, I always felt I could make my own decisions when it comes to grammar and style matters in English. This feeling, however, changed recently when, in a matter of days, the Microsoft Word grammar and style checker on my recently purchased laptop started disliking all my passive constructions, and suggested that I should replace them with active clauses. I was not impressed. (And even as I am writing this, a lot of the passive constructions in this text are underlined as ‘errors’.)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

Curzan, A. 2014. Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pullum, G. K. 2014. ‘Fear and Loathing of the English Passive’. Language & Communication 37, 6074.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strunk, W. 1918. The Elements of Style. Privately printed in Geneva, NY, at the Press of W. F. Humphrey. Available online at: http://www.bartleby.com/141.Google Scholar