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Do those who feel that grammar checkers are worthless bear as much disdain
for spell checkers? They are both often wrong in their suggestions, but both
serve a useful function if you accept their limitations and work within them.
Heck, for that matter, on a bad day, a lot of what I type on this keyboard
comes out wrong. Should I discard its utility because it cannot serve me
fully all the time? It's a tool, and I accept the fact that it cannot make
me type any better-- *I* have to do that.
Likewise, I accept the limitation that my grammar checker cannot untwist a
complicated sentence. What it *can* do is suggest that the sentence is,
after all, too complicated.
I don't use grammar checkers often, but I find them useful for ferreting out
too-long sentences--something I am prone to, especially in my fiction--and
flagging passive constructions--something I get inured to because that's all
the engineers here know how to write.
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"I hate quotations!" Wolf Lahti
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson Bow, Washington
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wduby -at- paccar -dot- com wolf-lahti -at- usa -dot- net
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