Did you mean to type...?

Submitted by James on Tue, 31/07/2007 - 11:58

Microsoft Word has, for as long as I remember, had a feature whereby spelling can be checked. A red squiggly line underneath the text indicates spelling errors.

Then they added the option of checking grammar. This is indicated by a green squiggly line, and proved very useful when proof-reading essays where it mattered whether your full-stop went inside or outside the closing quotation mark!

Word 2007 adds a new feature, which they call “contextual spelling”, blue squiggly line. What they mean is that sometimes you type a genuine word (no spelling error), with no obvious grammatical faux pas (no grammatical error). In other words, you have a well formed sentence. However, in the context of the sentence, Word thinks you may have meant to use a different word at one particular point.

I love it – it is a really useful feature for picking up things like their/there here/hear and so on.

However, it choked on Mark 14:21: “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him”. Did you mean “Son of mangoes”?

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