Grammar Discussions

medhead said:
I get it occasionally now. There was a way to turn it off. But now when it happens I can only "ignore once". Meaning the same thing will be flagged next time I open the document.
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have they removed that option from general settings?

I have removed spelling, capitalisation, grammar check, auto-correct and all sorts of things :)
 
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That last sales call was a waist of time.
Gee that business has gone really quite lately.
Straight from our sales reports I am afraid to tell you but not from WA folks.
I wonder how many look up a brand on the internet when they cannot spell the brand name.
 
medhead said:
Not sure about you. But Word is always at me for writing in passive voice. Yes Word, past tense, third person is how I'm expected to write things.
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Warks said:
I can remember those green squiggly underlines every time I wrote up a report on an experiment. All that blah about "passive voice" gave me the #$%^s. There is/was no other way to write something in the past tense. I haven't seen that pop up in years though - I thought they must have changed it.
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Indeed. If you write from a scientific frame, your writing will almost always be predisposed to be in passive voice. I personally think there is nothing wrong with that. Yes it can sound "boring", but active voice and first person just sounds pretentious when it comes to describing science objectively.

We had a student writing workshop once and the instructor tried to convince us that writing scientific journal articles with first person was becoming more common. We didn't exactly come to blows, but suffice to say we had to settle with agreeing to disagree.

medhead said:
I get it occasionally now. There was a way to turn it off. But now when it happens I can only "ignore once". Meaning the same thing will be flagged next time I open the document.
Click to expand...

I don't turn it off. I don't the squiggly green line very often; unsure if it's because the checker has been pacified in recent versions, or my writing has genuinely improved significantly.

The squiggly red line has occasionally picked up the odd silly spelling mistake, but that's about it. I don't run the spell/grammar checker through my document any more - I just go back and read it to a fine degree.
 
Spongbob said:
OK, is it abolition or abolishment?
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According to what I can find online, either is fine, but abolition appears more often and appears to be preferred.

For some reason, some sources say that abolishment is more commonly applied when it refers to slavery.
 
How about 'disinterested' vs 'uninterested'?

People use disinterested to mean either "lost interest in" or "not interested" when it actually means 'impartial'.
 
Warks said:
How about 'disinterested' vs 'uninterested'?

People use disinterested to mean either "lost interest in" or "not interested" when it actually means 'impartial'.
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That might have been the case back in the day. But nowadays ...
 
Yes, that one really is an issue for me. The use of either one in the correct context explains what one means very well, unless you get it wrong.

I am reminded of a supervisor I was talking to once who said he had a worker who was his Achilles Heel, when I knew he meant that he considered the worker to be an asset.

the worker
Warks said:
How about 'disinterested' vs 'uninterested'?

People use disinterested to mean either "lost interest in" or "not interested" when it actually means 'impartial'.
Click to expand...
 
get me outta here said:
I am reminded of a supervisor I was talking to once who said he had a worker who was his Achilles Heel, when I knew he meant that he considered the worker to be an asset.

the worker
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For Achilles his heel was an asset. It was Paris who discovered this was not always the case. Maybe that was the context of your supervisor's comment (i.e. I value her/him, but others do not)?
 
get me outta here said:
I am reminded of a supervisor I was talking to once who said he had a worker who was his Achilles Heel, when I knew he meant that he considered the worker to be an asset.
Click to expand...

Spongbob said:
For Achilles his heel was an asset. It was Paris who discovered this was not always the case. Maybe that was the context of your supervisor's comment (i.e. I value her/him, but others do not)?
Click to expand...

I don't think of Achilles heel as meaning an asset (or indispensable asset), but rather a weakness or linchpin. Therefore, in my opinion, the boss was likely using the phrase incorrectly; I could possibly see one obscure correct usage, but even then it would be confusing and I would rather restate it.
 
Yes, he meant the guy was an asset. Which was ironic really as I knew that the worker was not an asset at all!
anat0l said:
I don't think of Achilles heel as meaning an asset (or indispensable asset), but rather a weakness or linchpin. Therefore, in my opinion, the boss was likely using the phrase incorrectly; I could possibly see one obscure correct usage, but even then it would be confusing and I would rather restate it.
Click to expand...
 

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