I have a love-hate relationship with the Microsoft Word grammar and spelling checker. Of course it allows me to power-type and catches me making all kind of grievous errors.
But there is one thing that annoys me – it is that I cannot use the word “which” in a sentence. This is a turn of events which I find very frustrating. (In the previous sentence, the monster would blow a gasket and demand that I change the “which” to “that”. Aargh!
I am sure that some one decided what the right way to use which and that – as far as I can tell the simple rule is always use that. The problem is that the word “that” is such a yucky-sounding word – “which” just sounds classier and more intellectual.
Read the following aloud, read the first with a hint of British accent and the second with a hint of Southern accent.
This is a turn of events which I find frustrating.
This is a turn of events that I find frustrating.
See – you sound like a yokel when you say it properly and when you say it wrong it sounds like you are a smooth cool dude. So you now understand my frustration and my growing hate for the grammar checker. I type sentences which sound intellectual, and the software insists on dumbing them down.
So I finally beat the checker. Type the following sentence into your Microsoft Word (I did it on the Mac).
“Part of the strength of the approach is that the activity is cross-disciplinary, involving the resources and talents of many people.”
It will highlight “cross-disciplinary” and suggest that you change it to “cross disciplinary”. Go ahead and accept the change. Then the checker will highlight it again and suggest that it be changed to “cross-disciplinary”. And back and forth – so it goes.
Now you may not think of this as a victory over the unfeeling, unyielding, beast known as the “evil that remover” – but for me, this is much like the end of the movie “War Games” – because the software is in a loop, I assert that no matter how powerful the computer is, we humans can still out-wit them is small ways.
Ha!