Don't Let Microsoft Word's Blue Lines Ruin Your Grammar Game

Just when you think you've absolutely rocked your latest writing session, you look back through your document to find it's peppered with Microsoft Word's not-so-subtle blue underlines. Scroll down page after page and they just keep popping up.

Your grammar game is so weak, they say.

But don't let those little know-it-alls throw you off. For every out-of-place hyphen or double period they highlight, there are a handful of suggestions that are downright silly. If you let doubt creep in about the quality of your work, you might wind up accepting changes and ruining what you've done.

To catalog some examples, I pulled up a document that I worked on recently for a soon-to-be-published golf newsletter and took a look at what Word's grammar checker had to say. Maybe some of the suggestions would be worth consideration.

(They weren't.)

Here are a few examples, starting with the flat-out ridiculous:

• "Just like that, a clench of the fist..."

WORD SAYS: Maybe you made a word-choice error — <fist> could be <first>, as in "a clench of the first..."

• "One option is to practice putting on a carpet or mat..."

WORD SAYS: Double-check if you meant to say, "One option is to practice putting yourself on a carpet or mat..."

• "...my stock pitch shot is a 45-yard carry."

WORD SAYS: It's possible you really meant <curry>, as in "...my stock pitch shot is a 45-yard curry."

Now that would be a tasty wedge!

Obviously these are more hilarious than helpful. Some suggestions though are closer to truly authoritative guidance, which is certainly a good thing — assuming the guidance takes meaning and context and writing style into account. Often it does not (and cannot).

For instance:

• "Commit to working with a professional instructor to sharpen particular skills and techniques."

WORD SAYS: Change to <skills>, because concise writing is better.

Not bad guidance, but in no way is it universal. Word has a hunger for chopping off words that it considers extraneous. But here, the word particular is in place to emphasize concentration on certain skills and techniques, not all of them. Removing it would overly generalize the statement, which is not the meaning. Particular is serving a purpose.

• "They want to see something different so they know they are on the right path."

WORD SAYS: Adding a comma would be better, as in "They want to see something different, so they know they are on the right path."

This one gets into the more technical aspects of editing, which is where blanket suggestions separated from context can trip writers up.

Whether or not you use a comma in instances like this has to do with conjunctions and clauses. In a way, Word is on the right track — in many cases, different would be followed by a comma.

"They want to do something different, so they are going to the beach."

Here, the two clauses are independent (each is a complete thought on its own), so the conjunction (the connector), in this case so, is preceded by a comma.

But in the case flagged by Word, the word so is connecting an independent clause with a dependent clause. Meaning the second half of the sentence makes no sense without the first. In those cases, there is no comma.

CORRECT: "I went to the doctor so I could get medicine."

INCORRECT: "I went to the doctor, so I could get medicine."

If this all seems confusing and technical, that's kind of the point. The mechanics of grammar and language are often too complex for blanket suggestions to fix. Relying on them would degrade your work and potentially confuse the reader.

It also makes clear the importance of editors. Professional editors understand the mechanics and guide writers through the hard-to-grasp technical elements. Do you really want to dive into the weeds on coordinating and subordinating conjunctions without a little help?

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