Professional Conformity

November 6, 2023 11:45 AM

Word's spell-checker and grammar features have become subtle arbiters of language, too. Although seemingly trivial, these tools "promote a sense of consistency and correctness", says Wolf, and this uniformity comes at the cost of writing diversity. "Writers, when prompted by the software's automated norms, might unintentionally forsake their unique voices and expressions." This becomes even more invasive when you look at the role and impact of autocorrect and predictive text. from The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language [BBC]
posted by chavenet (47 comments total)

In Icelandic poetry there's no convention that the first line of a poem should be capitalized.

I co-directed a poetry chapbook series in Iceland for a little under a decade. Poets would often submit manuscripts to us where the beginning of each line would be capitalized. At first I thought that this was due to the influence of English language poetry, but I saw this also in manuscripts by poets who clearly had fairly extensive knowledge of Icelandic poetry. Then it dawned on me.

Microsoft Word automatically capitalizes the first letter of a new line.

Whenever I see an Icelandic poem written that way, I think: "there's the influence of Word on Icelandic poetry".
posted by Kattullus at 12:02 PM on November 6, 2023 [34 favorites]

"It looks like you're trying to have an original thought. Would you like help?"
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 12:12 PM on November 6, 2023 [22 favorites]

Thanks for this. I feel the same way about this as I do about Grammarly: The end result is conformity and stifling people's own internal expression style.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:14 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

TBH, the spelling erros I can handle, but, people, too many don't care where they put their modifiers. Don't get me started on capitalization.
posted by mule98J at 12:22 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Jesus, the terrible, watery writing style that Word wants you to use sucks all the vitality and voice out of your thoughts. It's just the lowest common denominator of simple and inoffensive...and yet some people still manage to be confused & confusing. Bah!

I turn off all the grammar-checking as soon as I sit down at a new machine.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:39 PM on November 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

If it makes anyone feel better, every writer I know (including myself) spends a lot of time beating Word until it bends to our will. Mine no longer changes "grey" to "gray" and its dictionary now understands I am, in fact, going to call something Hansel-and-Gretl-y and there's nothing it can do about it.
posted by headspace at 12:39 PM on November 6, 2023 [15 favorites]

I turn off grammar correction and auto-complete in MS Word, as they drive me crazy and at any rate are inappropriate for the type of scientific documents I have to write. Auto-correct also plays havoc with capitalisation in scientific documents.

I always spend the time adding Canadian spelling to the dictionary. I don't like being told words like colour are spelt incorrectly.

There is something wonderful about using a real Roget's thesaurus, with words grouped by concept. They let you explore the language in a way that dictionary-style and electronic thesauruses are incapable of.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:40 PM on November 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

Word introduced line breaks, along with bold and italic fonts on screen.
I'm quite pedantic about putting species names Orycteropus afer in italics. Because that is how it is done. But in typewriter days no italics so, by convention, Orycteropus afer was used to represent italics. We haven't got there yet but there's great scope for incorporating colour into manuscripts to add meta-meaning to the text.
Kelly green "#4CBB17" will do for generic Irish references although politics strives for different:
Fianna Fáil #66BB66 vs Fine Gael #009FF3 vs Greens #99CC33
Orange "#FFA500" for marmalade excursions or fried fish
Dull red "#990000" for fury
Cambridge "#3d85c6" vs Oxford"#002147" matter if you're British
There's a war on about what best represents the Democrats: this "#3333FF" or that " #00A6EF"
and Republicans are divided been electric #DE0100 or plain #E9141D red
But then again maybe this train has left the station with Emojis occupying the platform
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:41 PM on November 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

My work email makes tone suggestions when I describe anything in a simplistically negative way. It gives me a whole “Are you sure about this?” pop-up message. Eat my shorts, Outlook (bet you won’t catch that one).
posted by Comet Bug at 12:52 PM on November 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Years ago, Word flagged my use of 'whilst' as antiquated, suggesting 'while' instead. I questioned this, rejected the change, and stuck with 'whilst.'
posted by ben30 at 1:04 PM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

In Microsoft products in general, I'd like an easily accessible "I know what I'm doing" button that turns off all of the tools and settings that are seemingly left over from the 90s when users needed guidance in how to use a computer.

If I didn't capitalize it, I most likey didn't want it capitalized, and vice versa.

Yes, I'd actually like to see file extensions for known for types, and please show me all files, even ones that are dangerous to change.

And sometimes I like using wordy colloquialisms. Suck it, Word.

And related to an FPP from a few days ago, if I want my data mangled, I'll do it myself, Excel.
posted by Ickster at 1:10 PM on November 6, 2023 [13 favorites]

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Unhelpful Suggestions, and the Word was Annoying.

I don't have Word installed, but I'd love for someone to post some of the suggested corrections to the old King James.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:17 PM on November 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

I usually remind my undergraduates that the spellchecker is not your friend, as it cannot do things like tell you that your manors should be your manners, or that Tennyson's Lady of Shalott is not, in fact, a near relative to an onion. In fact, I generally just warn them against all of Word's checkers, for the reasons already given by posters above.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:20 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't use Microsoft Word at all.

I do appreciate, though, that I am lucky to have a choice, and that too many people are held hostage to Microsoft products in the workplace.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:29 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

As for me, I just resolutely ignore all the blandishments that the software throws at me.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:39 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't use Word these days but I'm doing my fiction project in Google Docs and its the same. fiction writing is about tone and voice and character, not bland correctness. I have to do the same battle with the stupid program to stop questioning character names and lines of dialogue. its colloquial dude!
posted by supermedusa at 1:44 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

In only recently caved to the ubiquity of Word, and gave up my beloved WordPerfect (WP is a holdout among law-writing types).

I hate my life more than before. Word keeps wanting to insert itself everywhere, interrupting my pace with interjections of what it thinks I want -- which it never does. WP at least had the decency to get out of my way while I'm trying to work.

Type what I type, where I type it. This shouldn't be difficult.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:45 PM on November 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

\documentclass[metafilter]{comment}
\usepackage{snark,graphicx,booktabs,fancyhdr,amsmath}
\begin{document}
I have a suggestion to make, but you're not going to like it\ldots
\end{document}
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:52 PM on November 6, 2023 [24 favorites]

I don't give in to every suggestion from Word, or even most suggestions, but I do find the most recent version helpful. Sometimes I am making a deliberate style choice but sometimes I'm just throwing in three words where one would do, and Word is actually pretty good at pointing out the latter.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:59 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

The spell check is indeed my friend, as it prevents me from having to goigle 90% of my words I know but can't spell mangling so I don't sound like an alien. I also understand it's flaws and thus never think it's automatically right when there's a blue line, or even a red one. The red ones are usually right though, I probably did mispell definetly and resterant
posted by Jacen at 2:14 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Microsoft Word automatically capitalizes the first letter of a new line.
This one has particularly driven me nuts over the years. A place I used to work had a style guide that included not capitalising the first word in numbered or bulleted lists, so I used to have to go back and change them every time.

I do use the various checking tools because, while I'm pretty good at spelling and grammar, I'm a clumsy typist. I never rely on the automatic tools completely though. Assuming Word knows best is the biggest error people make. I also seem to spend a lot of time changing the language of documents created by others away from US English (a contradictory statement if there ever was one) to actual English.
posted by dg at 2:23 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel it’s too often the worst of both worlds. Word consistently introduces errors into text, yet at the same time I still see stuff full of elementary mistakes that Word would have picked up if spell check had been used.
posted by Phanx at 2:27 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

The average user is probably unaware, but Word's checkers are pretty customizable. Under Preferences, there's a whole Spelling & Grammer popup, plus a separate set of 30+ grammar settings you can modify.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:14 PM on November 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

\begin{document}
I have a suggestion to make, but you're not going to like it\ldots
\end{document}

Indeed: comment text should be an \input or an \include, not its own separate document.
posted by eviemath at 3:27 PM on November 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't do much writing. It's not in my job description. But when I do, I need a spell checker. God, I can't spell. Remember those Iowa tests? I would score 95% tile and above on everything except spelling (and those stupid if you fold paper like this and punch a hole, what would it look like unfolded? things) where I would be lucky to be at 50% tile. I also use Libre Office.

When I was a grad student and really writing (late 90s) I just hit ignore forever and that usually took care of most of Word's crap.
posted by kathrynm at 3:30 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I use a spell checker because my spelling is pretty unreliable. It's a net win for me.

On the other hand, I gave in on "judgement"-- the spell checker prefers 'judgment". Perhaps my preference wasn't actually a problem.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:49 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I heard a Turns Out a while ago about how, for a long time, -ise and -ize were both considered acceptable forms in UK English, and the contemporary notion that -ize is NA and -ise is UK comes primarily from someone in charge of spell check for the UK market deciding that, if -ize is the only acceptable spelling in NA, then in the UK, only -ise should be considered "correct"
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:52 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

In my youth I thought grammar check would be a great help if I made a mistake about some obscure thing or other.
It changed proper plurality agreement into something wrong no matter what I did, I fought with it for ten minutes over a single sentence, and I turned it off.
I tried again every few years as new versions came out, and it always, always screwed up on plurality agreement. Now I always turn it off before I write anything.
Well, no. Not quite. I use OpenOffice Writer instead of MS Word, and I leave all the assistance squiggles turned off in there, too.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 5:54 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

My father is writing a book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

He's getting increasingly irritated by Word's tendency to change certain combinations of punctuation into smily faces.

Made me realise just how bizarre this software is.
posted by Zumbador at 7:35 PM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

I let eBay's LLM helper draft a description of the Ooku manga for me the other day, and it was truly insipid. Hold on to your butts.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:17 PM on November 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

oh I will say though that the single worst Word grammar check recommendation I have ever encountered was the time that it asked me if I was sure I'd meant to write the word religious and not religiou's
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:14 PM on November 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

An English palomino wrote a textbook and got into a pedantic -ize -ise war to&fro with the editor at [USA] Prentice Hall. Proofs would come back -ized, stet-corrected to -ise and so on. The editor had the last word, did a desperate s/-ise/-ize/g and the book was printed to include "it is easy to be wize after the event".
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:13 PM on November 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

The article keeps coming back to the point that "Word defaults to US-English" but I've never installed Office on a Danish-language system and had it default to (US) English. Doesn't it default to the system language?
posted by Dysk at 11:59 PM on November 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Spell checking is generally useful, even with all its known problems.

Grammar checking, at least currently, is incorrect far too often to be of much use to me. I would think, though, that even something in a primitive stage might be of use to some people. Off the top of my head, people trying to write in a second language, or anyone else who frequently struggles with grammar for whatever reason.

Style checking can die in a fire.
posted by kyrademon at 4:12 AM on November 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Style checking can die in a fire.

To be fair, it's a problem among humans, too: my wife always gets agitated when I tell my kids that they have a comma splice and should either make two sentences or re-work it with a semicolon. "No semicolons," she literally shouts. College degree and everything; I just don't know.

People are weird, man.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:32 AM on November 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

Outlook gets SO bent out of shape that I start emails with "Yeah" because it's too informal. I literally had a college dean use "WTF" in an email the other day -- at my Ivy League school! This is 2023, there are no rules anymore.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:30 AM on November 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

> "No semicolons," she literally shouts.

I'm not surprised. the semicolon is basically a wasted keycap. You might write 1000s of words/day for years on end and never need one.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:48 AM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not surprised. the semicolon is basically a wasted keycap. You might write 1000s of words/day for years on end and never need one.

I would be surprised if there's been an entire month in my adult life when I didn't use a semicolon.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:58 AM on November 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

the semicolon is basically a wasted keycap

So, apparently, is the Shift key, given that you didn't capitalize your sentence.

Get into the sea, you!
posted by wenestvedt at 8:14 AM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Need a ;? No. Want to use a ;? Yes.
posted by Mitheral at 9:27 AM on November 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not surprised. the semicolon is basically a wasted keycap. You might write 1000s of words/day for years on end and never need one.

Exhibit A in "someone is wrong on the internet": A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
posted by chavenet at 11:07 AM on November 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I usually remind my undergraduates that the spellchecker is not your friend, as it cannot do things like tell you that your manors should be your manners, or that Tennyson's Lady of Shalott is not, in fact, a near relative to an onion.

I use Word a lot, but I don't think it's affected my writing much because I ignore/turn off all the autocorrect and grammar stuff. But Google has trained me to not even bother with spelling. If I want to look up something about that poem, I'm probably typing into the search bar something like

tenison lady shelot

and Google's got my back.
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not surprised. the semicolon is basically a wasted keycap. You might write 1000s of words/day for years on end and never need one.

I find it often to be essential for conveying the right emotional tone in my writing.

;)
posted by Dysk at 1:33 PM on November 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

For writers of English apart from US English, it's dismally easy to end up with a document that recommends or even "corrects" the spelling to something wrong. I may have discovered that the company-wide default Word template for a large Canadian company I once worked for was:

1. set to US English;
2. mysteriously, world writable.

Sometimes you have to do the right thing.
posted by scruss at 1:39 PM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Teaching English to kids who’ve had some experience overseas, but are a couple grade levels behind their native level peers, I ask them not to use grammarly to write their assignments. When they ask why (and many of them have been using it for years), I tell them I want them to learn to write like themselves, not some bland algorithm.

Hell, if Word is going offer suggestions, why not aim for something useful? Point out that I’m overusing a word or phrase (not only, but also overuse is my current weakness), or that I’ve started two paragraphs in a row with the same structure. I mean, if I used two words where one would do, that’s probably because I wanted the nuance that comes from those two words. I meant to do that, Word. Try being helpful by finding the things I didn’t mean to do.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:51 PM on November 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

TIL that not everyone uses at least one semicolon in every paragraph. Though I’m told I have the verbal mannerisms of an old man from the 1920s; maybe that applies to my writing, too.
posted by caviar2d2 at 4:10 PM on November 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

Like a lot of fiction writers, I use punctuation to denote rhythm and intonation to almost as great an extent as I use them for purely grammatical purposes. A semicolon indicates not just that the two sentences are connected in some way, but how I want them to sound. E.g.:

This sentence ends with a period. The ending of that sentence and the start of this one sound a certain way in your head.

This sentence ends with a semicolon; the ending of that sentence and the start of this one may sound slightly different to you.

(Or they might not. YMMV.)

Anyway, this is why authors go to war with copyeditors over comma placement with startling regularity. There are two different reasons to put a comma somewhere, grammatical and rhythmic, and they don't always coincide.
posted by kyrademon at 5:48 PM on November 7, 2023 [9 favorites]