Simple question of shortening two words and apostrophe s but my spell checker has got me doubting myself. I have just written the following sentence (a guy talking about a facial mole): “Why would I get rid of it? It’s part of who I am” Apostrophe s as I'm shortening "it is part of who I am" to "it's part of who I am" but the spell checker flagged it up as an error and wants me to write: “Why would I get rid of it? Its part of who I am” I know I'm right (well, I think I'm right) but what do you guys think? Thanks x
Spellcheckers are limited when it comes to some tasks. Yours seems to treat all 'its' as possessive rather than a contraction. Mine recognizes both. Just add it.
So, am I right? and how do I add it? It doesn't always pick them up, depending what I write, it will flag some and not others. I'm just not sure why it flagged this one as it seemed pretty simple to me. The fact that it's flagged, is making me doubt myself.
Your version is correct. "It's" is a contraction of "it is." "Its" is the possessive. Spell checker is a moron.
I now know spell checker is a moron LOL. It's like when you say a word a number of times over and over, you start to doubt the word.
Make sure there's not a hard-to-spot spelling goof somewhere else in the sentence in your original copy. One of the Miranda forms I use in my line of work kept flagging advise as incorrect in the following sentence, telling me to change it to advice, which is clearly wrong: You are here as a suspect or presumed accused and before asking you any questions I wish to advise you of your rights. The glitch was coming from the fact that I had spelled the word here as hear and it was throwing the rest of the sentence off. Took me forever to spot the real error.
Yes. Right click on the highlighted word. Are you sure those are the same spellcheckers? The forum (or my basic computer) has one, Word has one, Scrivener has one ...
Spellcheckers are not only limited, but do not have brains. Consulting real-live humans is the way to go.
Ah, the 'add to dictionary' bit. I'm using word on windows 8 (I bought the full office program when I got my new lappy as they gave me £100 for the old lappy. I'd only had it 14 month and it had killed itself (hard-drive went twice))
Oh I agree - that's why I have test readers and an editor although I try to iron out as much as I can before they get copies. It was just really, really annoying me!
I see what you mean but I can't see any other error in the line, and, as I've copied and pasted it on here, it is as it appears in the actual document.
My guess is that the spellchecker believes that you're trying to communicate something like: My car and I are a team. My part is to drive correctly; its part is to provide infinite horsepower. I doubt that there's any way to teach it what you do mean.
There's plenty of forums to check out in addition to spellchecker. Searching for stuff on the web can usually point me to some grammar site with a ton of brilliant people on it. I type in the whole phrase and put it in quotes so that the search engine searches for the exact phrase rather than individual words. Also, google is becoming a terrible resource because it bases its results on what you've searched for before rather than simply searching the web like an open database. It's not built for research; it's built for GPSing places on your iPhones now. I use something called goodsearch and it works pretty well. Way better than google or bing. But mostly I just posted before because people I know tend to think they're not as smart as the computer when really the exact opposite is the truth. Glad to hear that advice was not needed.
