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How to Use the Grammar Checker in Word 2016

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Updated:  
2016-03-26 07:22:35
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Word 2010 For Dummies
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Word 2016 offers on-the-fly grammar checking. Mark Twain once referred to English spelling as "drunken." If that's true, English grammar must be a hallucination. It's just like having your eighth-grade English teacher inside your computer — only it's all the time and not just during third period.

Word's grammar checker works like the spell checker. The main difference is that offenses are underlined with a blue zigzag, such as the one shown (although the zigzag looks gray). That's your hint of Word's sense of grammatical justice. Even then, the offense is most likely mild and, given the illusionary nature of English grammar, can probably be ignored.

A grammatical error is flagged.
A grammatical error is flagged.

To address a grammar issue, right-click the blue-underlined text, as shown. Use the pop-up menu to discover what's wrong or to choose an alternative suggestion. You also have the option to ignore the error.

  • The most common source of grammatical woe in English is verb agreement, or matching the subject to the correct verb.

  • The grammar checker is excellent at spotting two spaces between words when you need only one space. It's not so good at spotting fragments.

  • You may see false grammar errors when using Word's revision-tracking feature while the No Markup setting is enabled. Reveal all the revision marks to see what's up.

  • You can customize or even turn off grammar checking.

About This Article

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About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.