Q167655: WD97: Frequently Asked Questions About the Grammar Checker
Article: Q167655
Product(s): Word 97 for Windows
Version(s): WINDOWS:97
Operating System(s):
Keyword(s): kbdta kbproof word97kbfaq
Last Modified: 11-JUN-2002
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Q256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry
SUMMARY
=======
This article answers the most frequently asked questions about the grammar
checker that is included with Word 97.
MORE INFORMATION
================
1. Q. What does it mean that Word 97 has a "natural language" grammar checker?
A. The grammar checker in Word 97 can do a more comprehensive and accurate
analysis (also known as "parsing") of the submitted text, instead of simply
using a series of heuristics (or pattern matching) to flag errors. The Word
97 grammar checker does text analysis at a syntactical level and at a deeper,
logical, level to understand the relationship between the actions and the
people, or things, doing those actions. For example, the Word grammar checker
analyzes the following complex sentence
The legend says that that Kingdom was created by three ancient magicians,
whose magical powers governed the world and made them immortal and
all-powerful.
and rewrites it from the passive to the active voice for clarity, while
setting off the relative clause between commas:
The legend says that three ancient magicians, whose magical powers governed
the world and made them immortal and all-powerful, created that Kingdom.
2. Q. Who developed the Word 97 grammar checker?
A. The grammar checker is fully developed and owned by Microsoft.
3. Q. What are the key differences between Word 97 grammar checker and other
grammar checkers?
A. One of the cornerstone differences between the grammar checker in Word 97
and other grammar checkers stems from the fact that the grammar checker in
Word 97 uses advanced parsing techniques to understand the sentence structure
while the other grammar checkers rely mainly on "pattern matching." By
pattern matching, we mean that the program uses a technique that matches the
checked text against patterns of text stored in an internal database.
Following are some sentences that highlight the superiority of the natural
language grammar checker in Word:
- He never learned to swim, or did he want to.
The Word grammar checker corrects "or" with the appropriate conjunction
"nor."
- She encourages Stephen more than Elisabeth.
The Word grammar checker corrects the sentences by proposing two possible
new sentences to make the original meaning less ambiguous.
- They wanted for us to move to Alaska.
Word grammar checker corrects the sentence by removing the preposition
"for."
4. Q. What are the file names of the grammar checker files and where are they
installed?
A. Word (or Office) Setup installs the grammar checker by default. The English
grammar checker is comprised of two files
Msgren32.dll, and Msgr_en.lex,
both of which are installed in the "\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
Shared\Proof" folder.
5. Q. How much memory do I need to have on my computer in order to run the
grammar checker automatically?
A. Word will enable the grammar checker automatically if your computer has
sufficient available memory. The method of grammar checking that is enabled
when you set up and first start Word depends on the amount of available
memory on your computer.
Manually Check Grammar (8 MB or More):
To run the grammar checker when you click Spelling And Grammar on the Tools
menu, your computer must have more than 8 megabytes (MB) physical RAM. If you
have less than 8 MB, the grammar checker is turned off by default when you
first start Word.
Automatically Check Grammar (12 MB or More):
To run the grammar checker constantly (to display grammatical errors with wavy
underlines), your computer must have at least 12 MB of physical RAM. If your
computer has less than 12 MB of RAM, the Hide Grammatical Errors check box is
selected when you first start Word. To turn on the automatic grammar
checking, click this check box to clear it (on the Tools menu, click Spelling
and Grammar, and click the Options button).
Note also that for all Western languages other than English, the automatic
grammar checker is turned off by default. (The English grammar checker is
shipped with all versions of Word.)
6. Q. What are the registry entries for the grammar checker?
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious
problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft
cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry
Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
A.
For Windows 95
--------------
Grammar User Settings Per User:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing
Tools\Grammar\MSGrammar
Below this key, the grammar checker registers the grammar checker version
number (1.0 in the case of English), the language IDs, the key Writing style
(0 through 4) with the setting being the writing style names for the name,
and binary data for each rule/writing style for the data.
Grammar Machine Settings:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing
Tools\Grammar
Below this key are the language IDs (1033, 2057, 3081), the Normal style
attributes, and the values Dictionary and Engine which contain respectively
the fully qualified paths to the .lex and .dll files.
Just as with the other proofing tools, if the grammar checker files are
manually copied to their default locations, or to the Word folder, Word
auto-registers the grammar checker the first time it is used.
7. Q. Why does the grammar checker flag words that shouldn't be flagged, and why
does it provide suggestions that are incorrect?
A. In general, the grammar checker will incorrectly mark words or propose
incorrect suggestions, when the parser (that is, the grammar checker
component that analyzes the linguistic structure of a sentence) cannot
determine the correct structure of the analyzed sentence.
Although state-of-the-art in its category, the grammar checker (just like any
other commercially-available grammar checker program) is not perfect.
Therefore, when you use the grammar checker, you can expect some amount of
"false" or "suspect" flagging and subsequent wrong suggestions.
8. Q. Why can't the grammar checker spot mistakes in the phrase "We went two too
stores, to . . ."?
A. The grammar checker is designed to catch the kinds of errors that ordinary
users make every day. You will always be able to make up sentences that will
confuse the grammar checker.
9. Q. When the grammar checker is running in the background (wavy underlines),
why does it flag errors in a different order than when I click Spelling And
Grammar on the Tools menu (run the grammar checker in the foreground)?
A. With the background grammar checker, trying to achieve a logical
left-to-right flow is not as critical as it is for the grammar checker that
you run manually (click Spelling And Grammar on the Tools menu). Therefore,
for the background grammar checker, the error marked first is always the one
that returns a suggestion, regardless of its position in the sentence.
10. Q. Why is Ignore All not working as expected? For example, if I click Ignore
All for this sentence labeled as fragment
After serving lunch.
in the same grammar checker session, the grammar checker stops on other
sentences that are labeled as fragments, for example:
Over my dead body.
The grammar checker categorizes (internally) these two sentences as different
types of fragments, and in the above examples, grammar checker is ignoring
one of those types, but not the other. Thus the inconsistency of how Ignore
All works.
11. Q. Why aren't mistakes flagged in left-to-right sequence? For example:
But the army, however, went on with it's plan.
A. In most cases, the Grammar checker tries to flag errors from left-
to-right. However, In some cases this is not possible because the grammar
checker wants you to correct the most logical mistake first (this mistake
may not be the first mistake). In this case, punctuation or spacing mistakes
are flagged before specific or confined grammar checker mistakes.
12. Q. Why are some passive sentences flagged and rewritten by grammar checker,
while others are skipped?
NOTE: This problem occurs with other rules in addition to the
Passive-construction rule.
For example, the following passive sentence is not flagged:
The term of this Agreement shall commence on the Effective Date and shall
continue until terminated by Volcano Coffee in writing at any time, with or
without cause.
A. For certain types of sentences, when there is no clear syntactic subject,
the grammar checker will not attempt to flag the sentence.
13. Q. When I right-click a grammar error (an error marked with a wavy
underline), why doesn't the shortcut menu display the same options that are
available in the Spelling And Grammar dialog box? For example, if an item is
flagged, but if the grammar checker does not provide a suggestion, the only
options available are to ignore the sentence (and possibly miss other errors
in that sentence) or to click the Grammar command to invoke the Spelling And
Grammar dialog box.
A. For the background mode (wavy underlines), the grammar checker uses a
simplified interface. If you want to view all the possible errors in a given
sentence, you must click Grammar on the on the shortcut menu.
14. Q. Why do some pairs of words that are commonly confused work in one
direction only? For instance, in the grammar checker both flea and flee are
flagged as commonly confused words, but with the pair your and you're, only
the word "your" is flagged as a commonly confused word.
A. The grammar checker handles some commonly confused word pairs in a
unidirectional way to simplify the problem for the parser. The grammar
checker is designed this way to reduce the number items that are flagged by
the grammar checker but that are not true grammatical errors.
15. Q. Why is it that when a sentence is flagged as being too long, that's the
only advice given for the sentence?
A. Long sentences are often difficult to read both for people and for the
grammar checker. The grammar checker is not sophisticated enough to detect
grammatical errors in long sentences. If you are in doubt about the
grammatical accuracy of a long sentence, you should break it up into smaller
sentences.
16. Q. Why does the grammar checker ignore text enclosed in quotation marks? For
example, this text is ignored
He said, "what on earth were you thinking of?"
while in the following text, "what on earth" is flagged:
He said, what on earth were you thinking of?
A. The grammar checker assumes that text in a direct quotation should not be
critiqued.
17. Q. Why does the grammar checker ignore text in subdocuments such as,
headers, footers, and annotations?
A. By design, the grammar checker does not analyze text in headers, footers,
or annotations. Headers and footers typically do not contain complete
sentences. Similarly, annotations may be written in sentence fragments, and
are not suitable for grammar checking.
18. Q. Why can't I set options such as the length of sentence?
A. This option is built-in to the selected writing style. To change the
acceptable sentence length, change the selected writing style. The grammar
options that are built in to the writing style include:
- Length of long sentence
- Allowable number of noun modifiers
- Allowable number of consecutive prepositional phrases
- Allowable number of words to split infinitive
- Use of the first person pronoun
NOTE: Available in the grammar checker only when the Technical style is
selected.
The following table lists the specific values for the invisible options.
Writing Style
-------------
Invisible Option Casual Standard Formal Technical Custom
------------------------------------------------------------------
Length of long
sentence 50 50 40 40 40
Allowable number of
noun modifiers 5 4 3 3 4
Allowable number of
consecutive prepositional
phrases 5 4 3 3 4
Allowable number of words
to split infinitive 3 2 1 1 2
Technical writing
critiques off off off on off
19. Q. What do the grammar statistics mean?
A. The Flesch Reading Ease calculates how easy it is to read the document.
The higher the score (on a scale of 0 to 100), the easier it is to
understand the document.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level provides the writer of the document with a
value that indicates the minimum education level required for the reader to
be able to understand the document. The lower the score, the easier it is to
understand the document (scale is 0 to 12).
What formulas are these statistics based on?
The Flesch Reading Ease score is based on the number of words in each
sentence that is grammar checked, and the average syllable per word. The
Flesch Reading Ease score rates text on a 100-point scale; the higher the
score, the easier it is to understand the document.
The formula for the Flesch Reading Ease score is
206.835 - (1.015 x <ASL>) - (84.6 x <ASW>)
where <ASL> is the average sentence length (number of words/number of
sentences) and <ASW> average number of syllables per word (number of
syllables/number of words).
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is very similar to the above, and it
measures readability as a grade level.
The formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is:
Grade Level = (.39 x <ASL>) + (11.8 x <ASW>) - 15.59
Who uses them?
Various government agencies require that the readability of specific
documents or forms meet specific readability standards. For example, some
states require insurance forms to have a specified readability score.
20. Q. How many words and phrases are in the grammar dictionary?
A. The grammar dictionary includes approximately 99,000 words and phrases, in
their uninflected form (that is, this number does not include words such as
"went," "children," and so on, which are the inflected forms of "go" and
"child."
21. Q. What is the grammar dictionary based on?
A. It is based on the "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English," and the
"American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language," third edition.
22. Q. How is the English grammar checker different if I run it on U.K. English
text versus U.S. English?
A. The difference between proofing UK English text and US English is
primarily in the spelling variances of the words in the two languages, for
example, "colour" as opposed to "color." These variances do not have any
effect on grammar.
The vast majority of the grammar rules apply to all English text (U.S. and
U.K.). However, there are just a few grammar rules that differ depending on
the selected language:
a. Plural premodifiers that are very commonly used in U.K. English, are not
flagged for U.K. English, but are for U.S. English as in the following
example:
This is a trades union. We have done all the contents scanning.
b. Subject-verb agreement with collective nouns where the verb is used in the
plural form are not flagged in U.K. English, but are flagged in US
English. as in the following example:
The team are planning to mobilize soon.
23. Q. Some of the explanations don't seem to be related to the flagged mistake.
For example, in the sentence
Lets go home now.
the explanation in the grammar checker does not mention specifically the
confusable pair lets/let's.
A. The grammar explanations are intended to cover the most general cases
within each rule in order to avoid crowding the screen text.
Additional query words: 8.0 FAQ
======================================================================
Keywords : kbdta kbproof word97 kbfaq
Technology : kbWordSearch kbWord97 kbWord97Search kbZNotKeyword2
Version : WINDOWS:97
Issue type : kbinfo
=============================================================================
THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE MICROSOFT KNOWLEDGE BASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. MICROSOFT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT CORPORATION OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF MICROSOFT CORPORATION OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES SO THE FOREGOING LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY.
Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1986-2002.