For Writer's Headache, Try A Grammar Checker

Spreadsheets and outliners are joining scientific word processors and number crunchers in scientists’ software libraries. While it would be nice to add to the nonscientific shelf a package that cleans up grammatical errors and stylistic blunders as well, I’m still in search of the perfect grammar checker. Grammar rules are not easy for scientists to learn and remember just consider how hard it is to create a set of simple rules to teach grammar to what is, after all, a dumb computer. Some simple examples show just how difficult the problem is. The sentence, “Time flies like an arrow,” could be analyzed grammatically three ways. To see the less obvious possibilities, think of “Fruit flies like a banana” and “Time racehorses like a stop-watch.” What’s a computer to make of that? The point is, anyone in the market for a grammar checker should realize that those currently available programs have limited ca- pabilities However, grammar checkers do provide a useful ser vice—especially for text that needs to be highly polished. I find the most useful function of grammar checkers is flagging phrases written in passive voice, which many writers, myself included, use too often. Several grammar checkers are available for the Apple Macintosh, but my experience is limited to four software packages currently available for the IBM PC: Electric Webster, Grammatik II, Punctuation and Style, and RightWriter. I find Electric Webster and Punctuation and Style vastly inferior to Grammatik II and RightWriter. The former were released about five or six years ago, and neither has been seriously updated since. For anyone writing with Wordstar, Punctuation and Style works fairly well, but it does not work well with other word processors. Electric Webster runs a grammar checker and a spelling checker simultaneously, but both are poor. The best part of the program is its hyphenation dictionary. The better programs—RightWriter and Grammatik II—deal with a set of simple rules for punctuation and capitalization, so they will catch errors such as forgetting to capitalize the first letter in a sentence. But because they apply the rules blindly, they’ll also flag oddly put-together “words” or neologisms such as “SideKick” and “command.com.” (The rules say capital letters should only appear at the beginning of words, and the first letter following any period should be capitalized) Also, both will alert the writer to “doubled” words for verification; the writer would, for example, simply approve “Pago Pago,” but he’d be thankful that the software caught “and and.” Both Grammatik and RightWriter will flag sentences that they deem to be too long. RightWriter automatically flags sentences at 23 words or longer, a guideline borrowed from the Department of Defense. I found this annoying since many of my sentences tend to be slightly longer than 23 words. Grammatik will flag long sentences at any word length the writer chooses. The heart of both programs is flagging suspect usage. Grammatik acts like the negative of a spelling checker. Spelling checkers work by checking each word against a list of acceptable ones. Grammatik has a list of about 1,000 unacceptable phrases, and it flags those. RightWriter uses a set of rules, so it claims to find more errors. In my experience, RightWriter did flag more items than Grammatik, but it did not always flag more errors. Grammatik prints a list of errors and only flags some problems on the screen. While I enjoy looking at the errors on a hard copy, someone who prefers working primarily on the screen would probably be happier with RightWriter. However, once the writer has decided which of the program’s suggestions to accept, it’s easier to correct a document marked by RightWriter than one marked by Grammatik. Having said this about grammar checkers, I’m sure some of you are wondering: “Did this checker catch everything, or did The Scientist’s editors make his checker look good?” Of course, I say I didn’t need any help, knowing that the editors (and my checker) are sworn to protect their sources. Barry Simon is IBM Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech. [Ed. note: Grammar checkers for the Macintosh will be reviewed in a future issue.]

For Writer's Headache, Try A Grammar Checker

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