On 2005/11/13, Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Mark Grieveson wrote: > > > It was very good. It would not only point out > > grammar errors, but gave thorough explanations as > > well (for example: "This sentence is in the > > /passive voice, /ie, 'The ball was thrown by John'. > > Consider rewording to the /active voice,/ ie, 'John > > threw the ball'"). > > Ah, yes, the active, passive voice "error".
That's more of a style issue than a grammar error. > Mary's black eye stung. It had been hit by a > ball. She looked at each of her classmates. John > was the only one who would not look her in the eye. > She knew, the ball had been thrown by John. > > DINGDINGDING, passive voice! But that's what > fits there. > > > A function of computers is to help people to > > communicate, and become empowered. > > No, the function of computers is to do what we > tell them to do, not the other way around. I think it's also the function of computers to remind us that we may have committed an error. I think you're talking about auto-correction. Auto-correction is useful for fixing a very limited set of writing problems, e.g. correcting every occurence of "teh" (a letter combination that doesn't exist in conventional English) to "the". Anything more is probably asking for trouble. > > Some computer users are recent immigrants, for whom > > English is not their first language. Some computer > > users did not have a chance to attend > > post-secondary education, and worry about how they > > sound. And some are educated, but still like to > > have both their spelling and grammar checked once > > in a while. I wouldn't sit such an immigrant in front of a computer and have him or her type out business letters. However, in my former job as a copy editor I did find the crude grammar checker of the word processor I had to endure quite effective in ferreting out errors like subject-verb agreement. There were plenty of false positives, of course. But that's what the human (Ich) was hired for. [...] > [1] Why yes, their, there and they're were put into > that sentence as an example. Have a cookie! DISCLAIMER: This email was not checked for spelling and grammatical errors. -- Albert Einstein: Phantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen, denn Wissen ist begrenzt.
