My latest one is where I'm trying to say "my family attended church religiously." Attended is the proper past tense of attend, yet my spell-checker keeps flagging it as wrong and recommends I change it to attend, which of course is grammatically incorrect. "When I was growing up, my family attend church religiously."
How else would one attend church than religiously? Spelling checkers are simply a tool, nothing more. You have to accept that they are fallible, and should only be considered a pointer, not a reference. They will indicate correctly spelled words as wrong, and they will fail to detect incorrectly spelled words. In fact, it's better to think of them as saying, "Hey, take a peek here," rather than, "Hey, you screwed up here."
My advice in a situation like this is to be sure there's not a difficult-to-spot error elsewhere in the sentence making the grammar check insist on attend instead of attended. I had this happen in a Miranda form template I use on a regular basis for work. The sentence being: YOU ARE HERE AS A SUSPECT OR PRESUMED ACCUSED AND BEFORE ASKING YOU ANY QUESTIONS I WISH TO ADVISE YOU OF YOUR RIGHTS. MS Word kept telling me that advise needed to be advice, which is clearly incorrect. The error was actually that I had spelled the third word, here, as hear and was just blind to it. This skewed the rest of the grammar check. When I pop your sentence in its correct version into MS Word it comes up clean. Sure there isn't a spelling error somewhere else in your original?
I see your point. It sounds better than "regularly" or some other word anyway. Suffice to say, the point I'm trying to convey is that if the doors were open, my family was there.
I use Libreoffice Writer (UK version) and the "Language Tool" extension. They work fairly well (with autocorrect turned off). Since I write heavy duty erotica, whenever I start a new installation, I create a page with all the "naughty" words that are unlikely to by recognised by the dictionary and add them into my personal dictionary. This takes care of most things other than names. But adding unusual names the first time they are used handles that too.
You may need a pun checker. Don't think any WPs have these yet. BTW it is possible to attend church irreligiously, so to do it religiously is a viable option. A friends brother is atheist but just likes the singing at church.
Am I the only one that just doesn't use spellcheckers at all? Those flippin' red squiggly lines do my head in. I'd rather take the time to proofread myself.
you're not alone in that, alanna... i don't rely on them because they're not nearly as accurate as my brain...
I use Open Office for a Word Processor. It's free, and you can import your own ""dictionary/and add to it."" I am a horrible speller, so I find the spell-check to be useful. However, auto-correct is just plain stupid! On any device/within any software. . . Turn it OFF! (( "I have framed degrees on my wall in computer programming, and software engineering." (Not that anyone cares.)) Look, It may be fine for a research paper, (or the normal business worker,) but in reality. It will fuck you up in your prose. When I sit down to write, I have the US spell check on. However, I just run with it. I don't stop to check my spelling, my bad apostrophes, or grammar. I just run with it. . . It's the first draft. It's supposed to be sloppy! Spill those thoughts,and catch them while they ((pore!)"a direct spell check that failed"))... Go back later and clean it up later. . . If not, the editor should catch it, yah? That' what you pay em for.
What do you think people did when there were only typewriters? IDK, my parents had one. . . They thought it was the coolest thing on the market, because it had a ribbon to erase!!!!!! "What will they think of next?!" I Remember them remarking in astonishment.
I personally find speel cheker to be a valuable tule. That said, it does make it difficult to free-write. Seeing those little red squiggles all over the place pushes the limits of my discipline to NOT fix things as I go.
I like spellcheckers except when they correct a word for me. I'll never learn if they keep doing that. But they do flag some things for me. However, they don't replace the human eye. Ever.
