Section 6.3. Checking Grammar and Style

6.3. Checking Grammar and Style

Word's grammar and style tools work almost exactly like the spelling tools. You have the same choice between background checking and manual checking. If you check grammar and style in the background while you type, word puts a wavy green line under suspect sentences and phrases. If you check grammar manually, you view problem sentences in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box (Figure 6-10).

Figure 6-10. If you check spelling and grammar manually, you see errors appear in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box. Text in the upper-left corner describes the error, and suggestions appear at bottom. For a more detailed description of the problem, click Explain.

You may feel that Word's grammar police are a little too strict for your personal style of writing. If that's the case, you can tinker with the settings (Office button Word Options Proofing). Here are some of the options you toggle on or off in the Grammar Settings box (Figure 6-4):

• Capitalization . Finds words that should be capitalized, (like madame DeFarge).

• Fragments and run-ons . Checks for complete sentences and flags overly long meandering sentences that seem to just go on and on and you can't wait for them to stop but they never do.

• Misused words . Looks for the incorrect use of adjectives and adverbs.

• Negation . Flags double negatives .

• Noun phrases . Checks for proper usage of "a" and "an" and finds phrases where the number doesn't agree with the noun. For example, it wouldn't like "A Tale of Two City."

• Possessives and plurals . Leave this option checked if you have a problem forgetting apostrophes in phrases like "the ships hold."

• Punctuation . Checks your usage of quotation marks, commas, colons, and all those other little marks.

• Questions . Checks for question marks, and flags questions with non-standard structure.

• Relative clauses . Finds errors in relative clauses, such as the use of "which" instead of "who" in a clause referring to people.

• Subject-verb agreement . Flags sentences where the verbs don't match the nouns, as in "All of the nobles has gone to the guillotine."

• Verb phrases . Finds errors in verb usages such as incorrect tense.

Style checking is even more subjective than grammar checking. If you feel there ain't no reason Microsoft should meddle when you say you're real mad at the congressman, you can turn this feature off.

You can tweak the Style checking settings in the Word Options dialog box (Office button Word Options Proofing). For example, the "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word section has a Writing Style drop-down menu with two options: Grammar & Style or Grammar Only. If you choose Grammar & Style, Word hunts down problems such as clich s, passive sentences, and run-on sentences. It's always your choice though; turn on the suggestions that you find helpful and that match your own personal style.