As a Brit, I thought I'd comment on this thread. > David wrote: > Whereas US speakers are fond of using verbs as nouns, > nouns as verbs, adjectives as nouns etc., this happens much less > frequently in British English and English in other parts of the > commonwealth. Such misuse of words is generally frowned upon.
I'm not sure that this is a purely American phenomenon. We're quite happy with phrases such as "haves and have-nots". However, I think you're right that such unusual uses should be marked as spelling mistakes anyway. People understand that no spell or grammar checker is 100% accurate. If they choose to phrase things in an unorthodox way, they will expect 'false positives' to be marked. I would go so far as to flag all words that are sufficiently rare as spelling mistakes, as long as there is a single rule to turn this feature on and off. This would be particularly important for pairs of similar words (e.g. 'ingenious', 'ingenuous') where one is much more likely than the other. > | Not to mention that there are hundreds of Google hits with "two > coys", | "three coys", etc. since coy is apparently a commonly used > short form of | "company" in military circles. > > Once again US usage, but not here in the UK. I'd also like to caution > against trusting what it written on the web, and particularly the > language used; most is extremely poor. > > | There's also a verb "coy", which is obviously conjugated "she coys": > | www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=coys&x=0&y=0 > > A US dictionary. I simply mention this to reiterate that the English > that is spoken in north America is typical of there, but does not > represent English throughout the world. Coy appears as a verb in the OED, so it's not solely a US usage. However, I think it's rare either way. Statistically, I think, people who type 'she coys' are more likely to have intended 'she toys' or some other typo. > However, the main idea I'd like to put across is the function of the > spelling checker and grammar checker in an office program for use by > the masses. Its objective is to detect and flag most of the common > errors made by ordinary people. If it is too comprehensive many common > errors would not be detected, because an archaic or rare form of usage > happens to be the same. On the other hand if it is too concise many > errors will not be picked up. I'd argue that "coys" and "lazies" > should definitely be flagged as spelling errors (even in US English). > A good writer will turn off grammar checking anyway. This is what we must strive to avoid. Nobody's grammar is so good that they don't make occasional mistakes. To be useful, a grammar checker needs some attributes that are lacking in most of the present tools: - it needs to be trustworthy, with some degree of explanation about the rules it is imposing - it needs to be configurable, so that individual rules (or groups of related rules) can be turned off - it needs to be extensible, so that specialist groups can add their own rules The reason people get turned off grammar checkers is that they come across rules such as "xxx which" should be changed to one of "xxx, which" or "xxx that", but no explanation is given. They think the grammar checker is wrong, and turn it off. An brief explanation of restrictive/non-restrictive clauses would make everything clear. Users of British English could then make an informed choice about whether or not to follow this particular rule :-) Best wishes Matthew -- Matthew Strawbridge http://www.philoxenic.com Bespoke software development and freelance technical copy editing --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
