Hi David I find myself agreeing with everything in your last post.
I think it is important to have different sets of rules for the different flavours of English: British English, US English, etc. This would get around a lot of the problems where phrasing differs legitimately from location to location. These rule sets could (and should) share the common rules. > | Coy appears as a verb in the OED, so it's not solely a US usage. > > Interesting, which version are you looking at? It does not appear as a > verb in my 2002 OED Reference dictionary. Adjective and adverb, but > not as a verb. Nor does it appear in my Chambers as a verb. It's in the Shorter OED (and so presumably in the full OED too). However, each of the subentries is marked as rare or archaic, or passed out of common usage by the late 18th Century :-) > |>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 > > I think what you mean is that we should strive to make the grammar > checker good enough to be of use even to competent authors. I agree > with this sentiment. :-) > > However, let's not forget that the majority of the people using it > will not care about the advanced features, and for them getting the > basic straight forward elements right is crucial. Given that OOo is > rapidly becoming a mainstream mass-market end-user application, it is > my opinion that we need to focus on getting it right for them first, > then we can add the more advanced features. I think you're right. It would be counterproductive to bundle an immature grammar checker with OOo. A better strategy would be to introduce one as a plug-in initially, so that it could be used and tested by experts without turning off mainstream users. 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]
