posted
As a writer, one can't help but appreciate Microsoft Word, especially if you've ever tried to use any of the alternatives programs available. I've played around with Mac's iPages, but it's far inferior to Word. Plus, hardly anyone uses it, which creates a bad little cycle for iPages. Since no one uses it, few try it, so no one uses it.
There's a really awful writing program here in Korea that Android is trying to introduce to a Western mobile audience on smartphones and tablets, but that's never fly once people start trying it out. HWP, I think it's called, and it drives me nuts. Clunky, inefficient, and simply looks pretty bad.
Yet, there are definitely some annoying, and unhelpful, features of Word for serious, longer writing, and one is the spellchecker. For a twenty page story, I don't even have to run spellchecker because misspelled words, or words Word doesn't know, have the squiggly red line beneath them (or squiggly green lines for grammar suggestions). But once you get to a long doc numbering hundreds of pages, Word sends you a message that it's reached the extent of its automatic spellchecking capabilities.
Which is really amazing that they'd be a limit on anything, let alone several hundred pages. So I've gone online to figure out how to resolve this issue, as being able to see words that might be spelled wrong is really useful. I may run spellchecker one time, which takes a while for a 300+ word document, but then if I make changes the next day, I won't know if I've put in a typo (which I probably have, it's amazing how much my eyes have become glazed reviewing the text now).
Some people suggest marking some words as unneeded for correction, which I tried, yet each time I attempt to spellcheck again, Word insists on going over the same word again. Jeju, Incheon, Mi-Nu, etc. Time after time I press 'Ignore All', and time after time it'll want to spellcheck them again. It makes the whole process so tedious.
Others say to break the document up into several docs so that Word can handle it again, but as familiar as I am with the program, I've noticed that sometimes when I'll copy&paste from one doc to another, irregularities occur that I can't figure out how to easily resolve. They'll be slight, weird, but noticeable.
So I'm curious. What techniques have you all used when checking novels that seem to work best? When I go to writing websites, sometimes I'll see advertisements for spell checking programs, and I used to always think that strange since Word does it for you. But now I'm starting to wonder.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
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posted
Well, for starters, spellcheck is sometimes very helpful. I don't use it all that much because, when I type, I backspace with every word I mess up. I intentionally stop whatever I'm typing and fix the error. If the problem lies in the sentence structure, then I usually accept the spellchecker's advice. As far as words that the spellchecker doesn't recognize as a word and then consistently wants you to change it, I try to ignore them. I go over my work many times and although I haven't hundreds of pages for a single document, I generally catch my mistakes or the spellchecker catches them for me.
Posts: 114 | Registered: Feb 2014
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An option in Word's spell checker I use is add an unconventional word to the document's dictionary, the document's, not the user dictionary. I had done the latter for some time, but it became burdensomely problematic. All my wordprocessor applications have that add word to document or user dictionary feature.
Word's default dictionary is Oxford. Frankly, Oxford annoys the motherloving expletive out of me that a British dialect is default on a U.S. marketed application.
I keep a Webster's 11th Collegiate U.S. dialect dictionary application open when I'm writing or editing, and use an Oxford online for when auditing a British dialect work. For a few more dollars, though, wordprocessor companies sell alternative dictionaries compiled for import to an application. It's more of a hassle, though, than it's worth.
Those annoying red and green squiggly underlines can be turned off. They are set on as default. I turn off all the nuisance default nonsense and reset format the base document template in Standard Manuscript Format formatting and typeface.
WordPerefct Office is my preferred suite in the first place, for its reveal codes feature and nonverbose formatting codes. Word is absurdly verbose. A document created in Word's formatting accumulates invisible codes that expand file size exponentially even though word count doesn't appreciably change. When I import a Word document into WordPerfect and turn on reveal codes, oh my expletive, dozens of invisible, useless formatting codes per line, sometimes per word or even punctuation mark. A document stripped of all its useless formatting codes causes fewer cross platform complications, like for copy and paste, or import into, say, a publishing application for upload to a Print On Demand publication manufacturer or job shop printer. A lean and clean WordPerfect document is also often at least half the file size of the Word equivalent, making a WPD more portable. Although, my preferred portable document format is Adobe's Acrobat and Distiller PDF.
Word and WordPerfect also ship with grammar check set to informal default. Reset to strict for more comprehensive grammar check. Even then either or all, no grammar check application can evaluate the finer nuances of impeccable grammar and rhetoric. Only human expertise can do that. For example, compound noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective and syntax sequence. They have an order of sequential preference syntax that no grammar checker can evaluate. Clause and phrase compounding, distinctions between subordination and coordination and parallelism, distinctions between passive voice rhetorical virtues, active voice, static voice, and dynamic voice, overall top order organization and content, etc., no machine can evaluate.
I also have a set of and system for staying abreast of "silence" in reference resources. For example, the current convention for the word abbreviation of electronic mail is e-mail, However, usage precedent is becoming one word, no hyphen: email. If an up-to-date dictionary or usage dictionary offers no guidance, maybe I'll resort to a style manual or test precedent online. Many of the terms I come across in editing work are simply not in a dictionary.
Foreign loan words used by doctors, lawyers, engineers, financiers, electricians, scientists, etc., often Greek or Latin, aren't listed in a desktop Webster's. I resort to other sources for checking their spelling and compounding, sometimes their part of speech so I can recommend appropriate punctuation. And many experts have their own vocabulary inventions. Sometimes their words aren't in any reference at all.
Spell check and grammar check flags some homophone conflicts, but not very many, only the more common homophones. They won't flag this one unless manually added to the check homophone conflict list: the fisher appeared on the dam's concrete weir. "Fisher" is an animal species that might appear on a weir, Is "fissure" the intended word? The context and texture might clarify, maybe not. Only a human expert can evaluate that one. As editor, I mark such a conflict for writer evaluation check.
If I'm looking to see what a current or emerging diction item is, that not may accord with a standard reference variant, say the color between black and white, is gray the standard variant or grey? U.S. dialect gray is the standard variant; however, grey, the British and International English variant, is used exclusively by some writers, mostly from the Northeast. I will query the writer about using grey. If that's the only dialect variant, I'll suggest reconsideration. That one, though, is nonnegotiable usually.
Take another word that has dialect variants, cooperation is U.S., co-operation is British, and coöperation is International. The umlaut U, and other variations from a country dialect, signals a document is in International Standard Dialect. Spell checker won't help with that.
The advertised spell checker applications I've browsed are no better than a Word or WordPerfect one. They are actually scams in many cases to sell limited vocabularies to gullible, naive consumers. Some, though, are discipline or dialect specific, and are helpful in those regards. Say a spell checker for medical transcriptionists would have many Latin and Greek terms specific to medical terminology that aren't in Oxford or Webster's, etc.
Try finding this word in a desktop or even unabridged dictionary or online, anywhere: esophagogastroduodenoscopy. An arthroscopic procedure to examine the upper digestive tract. A colonoscopy examines the other end.
The solution for me as editor when I encountered that word the first time was and is word formation conventions. Individually, the parts are definably Latin and Greek. Their sequence is ordered logically in direction from the throat to the stomach down to the duodenum, which enters the small intestine.
I've also found many other reference shortcomings everywhere. Sometimes I punt.
And this is only to page 40. At first I resisted, then I was just like, 'Whatever'. Like, I get it. Any two word adjective is combined. I just don't remember Word being such a stickler for this particular rule, and I've been using it since the '90s. For the last one, not even Wikipedia adds the hyphen Wikipedia:
quote:Word's default dictionary is Oxford. Frankly, Oxford annoys the motherloving expletive out of me that a British dialect is default on a U.S. marketed application.
It's funny you say this. I have a penchant for using the British spelling for words like 'colour', and 'parlour', and Word always tries to change them. For the longest time I used 'nite', instead of 'night', but it stands out too much as a typo to too many people, so I dropped it.
I almost never use the grammar check. It's one thing if it's just a typo, like I don't put an 's' where it belongs, or I have two tenses in the same sentence. But for the most part, I think the grammar check sucks. It'll suggest changes which are in direct conflict with the logical makeup of the paragraph.
Definitely, proofing the manuscript is a tedious process. Like, I don't know if it's only me, but sometimes I swear I've made a correction to the text that shows up in the same spot again in a later read. I get the impression that Word doesn't always save when you press the icon at the top.
posted
Those hyphen words are problematic from different dialects and styles than Word programmers decided. Word doesn't manage hyphenation suggestions as well as WordPerfect does either.
Stopmotion is now one compound word, not two words or hyphenated, in prose writing.
nonsmoking, like almost all non- prefixes, is one word anymore. Exception, when the root word is a capital case proper noun: non-European. Exception, loan words that retain their original two-word form: non sequitur.
Same applies to multi- prefixes: multicolored. Most prefixes joined to a root word are compound rather than hyphenated.
Prefixes that end with a vowel and join to a root word that begins with a vowel conventionally take a hyphen: anti-inflammation, or where word meaning changes: represented, re-presented, preposition, pre-position. Many exceptions though: preexisted, reexamined.
Many changes in language arose after 1990s Digital Age onset. An up-to-date dictionary is the best practice resort but not comprehensive. A word compound reference is also an editor's essential tool. For U.S. dialect prose, Webster's, at least 11th Collegiate, if not unabridged, is the go-to dictionary and word compound reference.
Word's native Oxford dictionary, abridged, is preset to mostly prompt for common U.S. dialect variants. Every once in a while, more often than I like, Word will prompt for a non-U.S. variant. Not liking compound words, for example, that are compound words in U.S. dialect, or prompting for compound words when they are noncompounded words in U.S. dialect. Or words that have dual variants and the lazy programmer skipped over validation or decided which was personally preferable: sequela, U.S. variant; sequella, British variant.
Another conflict arises when a writer's dialect is specific to a region or discipline's idiom. Say, copyedit (v, n, adj, adv), which is the U.S. prose editor standard variant, or copy edit for journalism and serial publication editors. And sometimes if whoever hasn't bothered to double-check, copy-edit, which is the British variant.
Many words may also be hyphenated or compound when they are thought otherwise, nurse-practitioner, truckdriver, tractor-trailer, anymore (adv), any more (adj), awhile (adv), a while (adj), maybe (adv), night be (verb phrase), rear-ended (v), rear end (n), field test (n), field-test (v), fund-raise (n, v, adj, adv), decision-making, -maker, recordkeeping, apiece, etc.
I get a laugh when anyone compounds backside, meaning buttocks, but intended to mean an entire rear side of whatever.
I don't use taskbar buttons much. I use Ctrl-S (Windows) for save and verify on each save that the save did indeed happen. I've heard of and noticed that saved work may not save as intended. I've found that's often because an undo command may unpredictably undo more than the one change intended, maybe back two or more changes. I've had this trouble with Word, Acrobat, and InDesign, not WordPerfect. I've gotten into a habit of never using undo (Ctrl-Z) in any worprocessor application.
posted
On the subject of spelling and grammar checks, it's curious that kindle books from established publishers are still so poorly edited. I just finished Clive Barker's novella, "The Hellbound Heart", which the movie "Hellraiser" was based on, and the number of typos was stunning. You'll read this in Amazon reviews sometimes about how popular fiction will be so sloppily presented in ebooks. It's strange, because unlike a print edition, it seems so easy to fix on Kindle format. And since they charge so much for Kindle books, it's also frustrating.
I've noticed typos in Frank Herbert's "Dune", though not nearly as bad as Barker's novella. With "Hellbound Heart", you get the sense that someone really just didn't give a hoot. But I'm 37% of the way through "Dune", which definitely has some slow moments in its prose, but overall, quite interesting. But each time I come up to a typo, I almost wish there was an option to send a notation to Amazon for correction.
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posted
I can't rely on spell checking...it keeps telling me my own name is misspelled. Who am I to believe, me or the spell checker?
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Books that had not been priorly digitized are rushed through production. I guess you could say the digital publishing industry has shaky production values overall.
About $500 to digitize a novel, then only cursory proofreading, quick and dirty outcomes.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Some people suggest marking some words as unneeded for correction, which I tried, yet each time I attempt to spellcheck again, Word insists on going over the same word again. Jeju, Incheon, Mi-Nu, etc. Time after time I press 'Ignore All', and time after time it'll want to spellcheck them again. It makes the whole process so tedious.
Forgive me if I'm repeating someone else's answer but it's just a point of information.
'Ignore all' only applies to the current session with the document. That's why it always changes back. The real trick is to use, 'Add to Dictionary'. Then they're permanently accepted. You'll have to do it for their plurals and possessives too, but it's a whole lot better than all those squiggly lines.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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posted
I used to add to dictionary. The dictionary expanded exponentially. The program took longer and longer to boot up. Eventually, the program became unstable. Add to document saves a document dictionary with the document, not to the program's user settings. Add to document also stops revisit session "hits" on subsequent spell checks.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Try finding this word in a desktop or even unabridged dictionary or online, anywhere: esophagogastroduodenoscopy. An arthroscopic procedure to examine the upper digestive tract. A colonoscopy examines the other end.
posted
I'm not seeing 'add to document in my version of Word 2007. Oh well, I haven't had the slow down problems you mentioned, extrinsic. I guess I haven't added enough words. Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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quote:Originally posted by genevive42: I'm not seeing 'add to document in my version of Word 2007. Oh well, I haven't had the slow down problems you mentioned, extrinsic. I guess I haven't added enough words.
That's disappointing. I remember that command option being available in earlier versions. Maybe it was lost due to infringement litigation against Microsoft by Corel. I know some features went missing in the mid 2000s Office due to trademarked name overlaps. Microsoft either changed a command name or took out useful commands altogether. I have the 2010 Office suite now, but use it less than WordPerfect Office. It bothers me no end what's no longer available or as straightforward in Word as for previous versions.
An option available in Word 2010, maybe 2007, too, that might be comparable to add word to document, is creating a custom dictionary for any given novel in process, for example, and using the standard one and the custom one at the same time for spell check. I do so much proofreading that I have to be careful about adding words to the standard dictionary in any of my wordprocessor programs. One word off-spelled could cause problems for my business.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Try finding this word in a desktop or even unabridged dictionary or online, anywhere: esophagogastroduodenoscopy. An arthroscopic procedure to examine the upper digestive tract. A colonoscopy examines the other end.
<slaps Node of Perversity and stuffs it back under the desk>
Wasn't referenced on any search engine at the time I looked for it. Since you looked it up, the number of hits has bounced to about 215,000. I guess that might be due to the term being added to conformance indexing services and now search browsers catching up with pages listing it. It could reach millions of hits in no time at all.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
I depend on a spell checker. I want my spells right.
I have always used the tactic of if I could not get the spell checker to come up with the right spelling of the word I was trying to use, I would change the sentence and use a different word. My writing is a lot simpler in language because of that. I was never a great speller anyway so I have to use a spell checker. I prefer to write in NOTEPAD because it is really fast and does not nag. I then copy it to my favorite word processor and do my spell checking. I do find that when spell checking the document, I find it quicker to change the spelling of the incorrect word in the document than picking from the list of possible corrected words. The words I use, I mainly need them to be pointed out to be wrong for me. I can correct them on my own after that.
Grammar checks help, and I have several, but they still don't get me to a publishable level.
Posts: 1008 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Here's a grammar question that Word isn't helpful on. These are several lines from a novel synopsis I'm working on:
quote: Chapters 6 and 7 switch to a human’s POV, a half Korean, half American 22 year old named Nathaniel.
Should it be 'switch', or 'switches'? Word doesn't say either way, but then later I write:
quote: Chapters 16 and 17 opens with Sey-Mi on her illegal immigration mission.
Once again, Word has no suggestion, but why would it be 'opens', and not 'open', if the program is seeing 'Chapters' as plural? Or is it seeing it as singular?
quote: Chapter 21 and 22 opens on a new perspective, the Pervert.
quote: Chapters 27 and 28 conclude the Advocate’s perspective.
quote: Chapters 29 through 33 open on a state of emergency.
quote:Chapters 34 and 35 switches back to Nathaniel’s perspective.
quote:Chapters 36 through 38 bring the narrative back into Sey-Mi’s perspective.
quote: Chapters 39 through 42 oscillate between David and Sey-Mi’s POV.
posted
The subject of each of those lines are plural; therefore, the verbs should be plural. Singular subject, singular verb: Larry falls down. Plural subject, plural verb: Larry and Cindy fall down. Most regular singular, present-tense verbs take an -s suffix.
Where Word and WordPerfect fail is the numerals are by default ignored altogether. Try misspelling a word with an internal numeral: //miss6pelled//. Neither spell check nor grammar check will alert on it. Same goes for sentences with numerals, or spelled-out numbers as subjects, or objects, like each one of yours above. If the subject and predicate are proximal with no intervening numerals, grammar check will alert to number agreement.
The software can't handle subject-verb number agreement if a number or numbers are part of a subject phrase.
Seriously, I can't strongly enough recommend for writers an up-to-date and comprehensive grammar handbook. None are on par with The Little, Brown Handbook, 13th edition, for U.S. English.
22-year-old is a hyphenated term, an adjective, actually. Grammar and spell check don't catch that one either.
quote: 22-year-old is a hyphenated term, an adjective, actually.
This is kind of interesting since it wants to hyphenate everything else.
With the plural subject, plural verb, I think it confused me because even as I just changed it, Word now wants to autocorrect it. Which leaves one to believe it's wrong. What I don't get is the inconsistency with their suggestions, however. Sometimes Word gives it a pass, other times it doesn't.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
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posted
Word's grammar check function was designed by committee consensus--incorporates many erroneous decisions based on a spectrum of cludged-together misbeliefs. On top of already numerous limitations and erroneous alerts, software cannot replace expert human analysis of language, grammar, and style nuances.
Little, Brown's 13th edition, by the way, notes when and where, what, how, and why, and such, a spell or grammar check application fails generally and on any given principle.
Resistance is fatal.
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