Re: people should just learn to spell

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Flash wrote:
> I'm told Weird has a grammar checker. Does anyone know how, and how
> well, it works?
First off, full disclosure: I've spent the past 40-odd years as a copy
editor, and some people think grammar checkers make copy editors obsolete.
But all partiality aside, I have to say, Balderdash! Grammar--at least
English grammar--is more exceptions than rules. There is NO WAY an
algorithm can verify what is or is not grammatical. The suggested
emendations, from the reviews I have read, are even more ludicrous that
those offered by spellcheckers. (I never install the ruddy things, at
least if I can avoid it; one of the other WPs--Weird or
WordImPerfect--makes you install it if you want the spellchecker.)
For one thing, in English the same combination of letters can be three
or four words (e.g., arm, the upper limb of an erect biped vs. arm,
weapon), each of which can be several parts of speech, and each of which
parts of speech can have dozens of meanings and take variant
constructions. How could one ever write an algorithm to cover all that?
Well, witness _English as She Is Spoke,_ about which Harry told us a
while back. Or--since Flash is fluent in German--let him find a German
Web page and click on "Translate This Page." (I did once, a couple of
years ago, and had a good laugh. It was actually useful to me, since I
once studied German and remember some of the grammar; "boldface," IIRC,
came out "fat.")
Or there's the famous "translation" of a Scripture text: the whiskey is
good but the meat is rotten (representing "the spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak").
Granted, translation is not the same as grammar checking, but they both
have to understand what is written. And I maintain that an algorithm
cannot even simulate understanding of English (as it can, for example,
of a SQL query).

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx