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Microsoft Grammar Ian does a bit of "Microsoft Bashing" using there (sic) own grammar checker.
I make no secret of the fact that I don't trust Microsoft. I've been using their software (most of which is okay) since the real early days when Microsoft DOS came on a couple of floppy disks. However, I've witnessed first hand the steady decline of Microsoft's business practices into territory that I really don't trust. For example, why is your internet viewing history stored in hidden files so that you can't see what's being stored? I'll probably do a whole rant on the dozen or so things I don't trust about Microsoft some time in the future. In the meantime, just for laughs, here's something different of theirs that I don't trust - the grammar checker in Word 97. Try typing (or COPY and PASTE) the following sentence into Word 97:
Do Microsoft Word's grammar tools do their checking correctly?
If you haven't already got Grammar Checking switched on, press F7 to do a manual check. On my system, it suggests I change the word: "their" to: "there". No doubt "theirs" some technical explanation for this based on how "there" grammar checker handles the peculiar structure of this sentence, but I wonder how often "they're" grammar checker makes such obvious mistakes, and how many people out "their" simply accept "there" incorrect suggestions?

Comments

On a different topic, I grammar-checked the sentence "Do Microsoft Word's grammar tools do their checking correctly?" in my copy of Word 2000. There was no complaint, so I concluded that MS must've fixed it since you tried it with Word 97.

But when I also tried:
"Do Microsoft Word's grammar tools do there checking correctly?"
and
"Do Microsoft Word's grammar tools do they're checking correctly?"
both of them passed as well! In typical Microsoft fashion they've fixed one error and introduced two more. :-)

- Doug M, 17-Nov-2004

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