If only the grammar checker would stick to checking grammar

Computers have a lot to learn about grammar and they will never be able to make stylistic choices, so wouldn't it be better if they didn't try?

If I employed a gardener, I would want him to mow the lawn, sweep up the leaves and do the boring, mechanical tasks haven't got the time or the patience to do. He will never know exactly how I want my visitors to feel when they walk through the gate so I wouldn't want him to recommend a nice climbing rose for my front door. Well, it's the same with grammar checkers. They don't know my relationship with my reader and whether the passive would be preferable here or if I am perfectly happy with a sentence that begins with ‘but'. Where the grammar checker really scores is for inadvertently missed or repeated words, forgotten capital letters and subjects that don't match the number of the verb. I can do this stuff, and I can mow my lawn, but it's very pleasant to have the bulk of it done for me.

Philip Hensher, in his article in the Independent "Computers have a lot to learn about grammar" misses this point I feel. He complains that computers are programmed using rules based on school-taught principles such as not repeating words and not using the passive or fragments. If only these were taught in school! But that is another subject. These are stylistic preferences, not grammar. He makes a nice case for repeated words in literature and points out that the only authors who use "muttered" and "breathed" in order to avoid repeating "said" are bad ones. He is quite right that there is no sin in using the passive - it is perfectly correct, just rather off-putting when used incessantly where a more direct and approachable tone would have been preferable.

It is axiomatic that a grammar checker cannot make stylistic choices, and in my view it would be better for everyone if it didn't try. Authors, poets and journalists who enjoy writing and write for people who enjoy reading can and should over-rule their grammar checkers anyway but spare a thought for business writers.

Many of the people who use grammar checkers every day derive no pleasure from writing and don't expect their readers to either. Their objective is to get business information over to an equally harassed audience efficiently and spend as little time writing as possible. There is little room in this process for considering the fine distinction between "a long, long way" and "a long way". I know from experience that these business writers normally ignore "passive, consider revising" because it is such a hopelessly unhelpful comment. If you know your grammar isn't up to much, you are not in a position to distinguish between style preferences and grammatical correctness, so wouldn't it be better if the computer kept it simple and just swept up the leaves?

Comments