The grammer checker on my writing program just tagged this sentence bit in a story of mine as having "verb confusion." The bit in question goes like this: "here comes the flak." Just how is that "verb confusion"? It is a statement that makes sense, but then again, I admit I am a little rusty on the whole verby thingy.
Don't use grammar checkers. Learn proper grammar yourself. Grammar checkers steer you wrong as often as they steer you right. I turned off my grammar checker and spell checker years ago and never turned them on again. My grammar is pretty good and I know more words than the Microsoft dictionary.
Grammar checkers aren't all bad. Occasionally, they'll find typos and whatnot that you've missed, but the majority of the time, they are highlighting things that don't need to be highlighted. If you aren't well-equipped with knowledge of grammar, they can have you second-guessing yourself all day.
Flak is both plural and singular... maybe that has something to do with it? The grammar checker should really have been coded better. Like the others have said, experience makes you a much better grammar checker than a program.
I checked Merriam-Webster and it says "flak" is plural, no mention of singular. That's weird. I might disagree with it there and say it's both, as well, because "Here come the flak" sounds about as natural as "Here come the judge."
Lost, I believe that is because even when it is singular, it is plural. Like sand. You don't have a sand, and you don't have a flak. You have flak/sand, or some flak/sand.
Yeah, don't rely on grammar checkers, just figure it out for yourself. (It looks fine to me by the way)
The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't say. The Longman Dictionary of Spoken and Written English says that "flak" is an uncountable noun, which is consistent with how I would use it (I wouldn't speak of "two flak", which is what plural would imply, but in the sense of anti-aircraft fire I might say "two pieces of flak tore through the wing"). Maybe this is a US English / British English issue, but it looks as if US writers who put "here comes the flak" can trust the UK and Canada to come to their defence.
This site is lagging so badly. It took me several tries just to get any page to load, and then several more just to make a post. There is nothing wrong with the sentence. I don't recommend turning off spell checker, though, as it does catch typos.
