Jonathan, I don't believe that your comments is unfounded and pointless... Or, even if I did, I hope I'd retain enough charm to disagree with you in a more pleasant way :-)
I have a few musing thoughts on the subject: Firstly, while I agree with the desire to build a "robust" grammar checker, there is a strong argument from linguistics that it may be "impossible" to build a "perfect" grammar check. Even if we ignore the differences between North American, Antipodean, and British English, there exist numerous interpretations of correctness. For this reason, publications like The Economist, and the Financial Times produce "style guides" for their contributing authors giving the house usage of such things as the Oxford comma. Secondly, well, I've written the paragraph below twice - hopefully you'll understand why. 1: I agree with you that turning off the grammar checker when writing technical documents is often necessary because of the overly simplistic models that they include. However, one perhaps important function of the grammar checker is to improve "readability". Sentence length, for example, is a much better correlate of "interpretability" than correct syntax in the general populace. Groups like programmers who are trained and expert in thinking about syntax, often in numerous languages, have an advantage in parsing complex structures. 2: You're right. Most grammar checkers are too simple. I normally turn them off when writing technical stuff. However, using them can make things easier to read. Forget correct grammar for the moment. Just keep your sentances short. This will make it far easier to understand. Programmers have an advantage, though. Practice in computer languages gives them an edge. They are used to dealing with complex stuff. They read complex English language sentances easier than most. [Note that paragraph 2 contains, I hope (!), rather more grammar errors than paragraph 1.] Thirdly, there is much truth in what Chad says. Such tools should be there to make it easier for people, not to replace them. Fourthly, and sadly this is where I put my marketing hat on. If the competition has a "grammar checker", no matter how flakey, then we have to have one. Otherwise marketeers for the competition will tout the incredibly valuable nature of this comparative advantage :-) Regards, Mark Oh, and for the record. John, where James had had "had had", had had "had". "Had had" had had the teacher's approval. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathon Blake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 7:12 PM Subject: Re: [Marketing] Abiword and OpenDocument On 10/5/05, Deepankar Datta wrote: > Something else of interest is the English grammar checker they now have Until grammr checkers can correctly punctuate a sentance such s the following, a knowledge of grammar will be required: John where James had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher's approval. xan jonathon -- Does your Office Suite conform to ISO Standards? --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
