Professor Finds Fault with MS Grammar Checker 607
ChuckOp writes "
front-page article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer states: "The University
of Washington associate professor has embarked on a one-man mission to persuade the Redmond company to improve the grammar-checking function in its popular word-processing program. Sandeep
Krishnamurthy is also trying to raise public awareness of the issue." He includes some twisted prose that the grammar checker fails to find fault with, such as: "Marketing are bad for brand big and small. You Know What I am Saying?" and "Gates do good marketing job in Microsoft". This last comment is disputed by retired Microsoft researcher Karen Jensen, who developed part of the underlying technology; "Only by knowing that 'Gates' probably refers to Bill Gates -- and not to the plural of the movable portion of a fence -- would the program know to suggest using 'does' instead." The professor also has several twisted examples available."
Re:It's only a simple tool! Use your knowledgebase (Score:3, Interesting)
> for a tool that they include in their software?
You're kidding, right?
Maury
openoffice (Score:2, Interesting)
The rise of Microsoft English(TM) (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that, in the long run, this will change usage so that Microsoft English becomes considered acceptable. But the trend does frighten me, given the recent issue with open standards in Massachusetts [slashdot.org]. In a dystopian future, open source eye-balls will only be allowed to read, not write, the language.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm a foreigner in an English speaking/typing country (USA) and didn't really spend so much time paying attention to English classes when I grew up because I was more interested in programming on computers and playing games. So sue me that I have to rely on a tool like spell checker in MS Word, but it sure would be nice if it could do a better job without I or someone else have to check it.
I May Be In the Minority on This (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't I know it (Score:2, Interesting)
The Dutch version of the Microsoft spelling checker changes my name, "Mikael", to "Eikel". This means acorn, in Dutch. "Eikel" also refers to the sensitive part of the male sex. A third meaning is that of "jerk". Needless to say I have never used the Microsoft spelling checker ever since. >:(
Re:Typical M$ Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's only a simple tool! Use your knowledgebase (Score:2, Interesting)
As the author of Grammatik put it:
"I've been in a discussion with John about how the grammar checking available today, 2002, is essentially no different than it was in 1992 when I sold my company to WordPerfect and quit working on the code. Essentially, what has happened is that Microsoft has decided that its version of a grammar checker is 'good enough' and has stopped significant work on improvement. No one else in the world has the resources to build a better grammar checker. "Who wants to try to compete with Microsoft Word's 95% market share?
Maybe he shouldn't rely on Word for everything? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oh I See! (Score:3, Interesting)
ESL - ARG (Score:3, Interesting)
It did make for some nice teaching opportunities when I got to tell them they were smarter than they thought, but it's frustrating to think that people accept that "The computer must be right" even with something as complex and human as grammar.
Who actually uses it? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm seriously curious, do most people try to use the grammar checker?
MS grammar checker deserves praise (Score:2, Interesting)
Show me other "grammar checkers" in the market that do better than the one in Word! The guy is a professor of Marketing yet he feels qualified to complain about the grammar checker. The Word grammar checker was the first migration of Microsoft Research know-how to a product. They had a group of 10+ linguists who developed the model and carefully tuned it. After 7-8 years since the first release, it is still state-of-the-art from an AI standpoint. I would blame MS for many things, but the grammar checker is not one. I'd love to see the Marketing professor try to improve it.
Re:Complexity of English (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this such a common misconception on Slashdot? I know that the vast majority of slashdotters are from the U.S. but don't you study any foreign languages? I'm not familiar with the U.S. school system but it amazes me if people don't learn any German, French or Spanish in high school - if you do you should quickly notice that English is extremely simple. A few examples:
Nouns:
English: Definite article "the" and -s plural (with few exceptions). Choice of indefinite article a/an depends on whether the word begins with a vowel sound.
French: Masculine/feminine that must be learnt (a few rules exist but in most cases they're useless), more irregular plural forms (and adjective declension).
German: Der/das/die, irregular plural forms (although a few rules exist), different accusative, dative and genitive forms (and adjective declension accordingly).
Verbs:
English: Apart from am/are/is have/has it's trivial; just add -s for third person singular regardless of whether it's a regular or irregular verb.
French: A nightmare: Five simple tenses and five compound tenses and so many irregular forms (and they're irregular for all persons).
German: Different endings for all persons (but fortunately they're the same for irregular verbs too). Two alternative auxiliary verbs (but fortunately it's quite easy to know which one).
And those are just languages that you should know - nouns can easily get even more complicated. In Swedish each noun has four forms since no equivalent of "the" exists - instead you append -t/-n/-et/-en/nothing for singular forms and then have a definite and an indefinitie plural form (and these are not very regular). The real fun starts when we get to extremely synthetic languages such as Finnish when you have a ratio of ~5-6 English words per Finnish word since you modify words instead of using more of the. The Finnish spellchecker for Word is a joke - once the language gets slightly more complicated it starts to suggest word forms, which don't exist since its limited grammar rules don't suffice. Obviously the spellchecker for both Swedish and Finnish has been made with a much smaller budget than the English one since the markets are smaller but they're not only bad - they're buggy as hell (the Swedish one frequently suggests exactly the same spelling that I already have and once I accept the "correction" it suggests the same correction again...).
And that's what I can say with my (in my opinion) quite limited knowledge of languages (grew up in Sweden, spoke Finnish at home, studied English, French and German in school).
It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the concept is a good one, but it sorely needs to be updated.
Re:It's only a simple tool! Use your knowledgebase (Score:5, Interesting)
A large number of English instructors at American colleges and universities today are either grad. students or part-timers, most of them earning $14,000 - $20,000 per year. Many of these people have 60 to 100 students per semester. Example: I started out as a grad. student teaching assistant. In addition to a full-time teaching load, I had 50 students to teach. I had to balance my own assignments with planning assignments, leading classes, and grading ~200 essays per semester. Later on, as an adjunct (part-time instructor) at a community college in North Carolina, I got paid $24 per credit hour per week. In other words, for teaching a standard 3-credit course, I was paid $72 per week - and I was only paid for the time I spent in class. No compensation for time spent in my office, grading and working with students outside of class, formulating assignments, etc. When my colleagues and I did the math for all the time we spent on these activities, we found we were making about $7.75 an hour. The majority of American students are being taught English by instructors like these.
Different people react to this shameful situation in academia different ways. For me, when I had 400 pages of writing to grade in a week, the only solution was to go over a paper one time, carefully, and to refer the student to a writing tutor at other times. It's not a question of wanting to help, or being too lazy to help. It's a question of the ability to do so. In a perfect world, tuition and fees paid to a university would "earn you the right" to have individual assistance with each writing assignment. Blame the academic world's focus on profit and part-time labor for the fact that isn't so.
Re:It's only a simple tool! Use your knowledgebase (Score:5, Interesting)
(This contrasts significantly with "whom", which seems to appear most commonly in usage examples, old writing, and references to old writing, like the common title pattern "For Whom the * *")
There are alternatives: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not a WordPerfect user, I downloaded the trial just for this because I've heard that it would be good for this kind of things.
Re:Oh I See! (Score:4, Interesting)
"OO.org doesn't default to my desired preferences! It is obviously inferior! Back to MS-Word for me!" See how silly that sounds?