We have always been a stickler for correct spelling and grammar. We check the spelling of road signs, makes sure that we ordered a “spelt” bagel instead of a “wheat” one, and points out typos on restaurant menus (even though it’s sometimes embarrassing). And this means we need to make sure our written communication is as clear as possible while also meeting our deadlines—and sometimes that means ignoring errors flagged by the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word or Google Docs (or whatever tool you use at work).
When you use a proper name that contains a word that is misspelled, such as “Adenauer.”
If you are using a proper name, such as Adenauer, which is a German surname, the spelling and grammar checker may flag this word as misspelled. However, it’s possible that the word is misspelled in many different ways. For example:
- Edna Daehner
- Adenauer
- Adanauer
When you use a hyphenated word at the end of a line.
You can safely ignore a potential error that’s flagged by the spelling and grammar checker if it concerns a hyphenated word at the end of a line. Most words are hyphenated when they are used as an adjective, but there are many exceptions to this rule. For example, “I’m going to read” is not hyphenated because it has become an existing compound verb (read-ing), rather than two separate words (read and ing).The decision whether or not to use a hyphenation is often stylistic, which means some people will prefer one style over another. In other words, your choice may be personal preference rather than grammatical correctness. The same goes for capitalization: some writers prefer lowercase letters in certain situations where others would capitalize them instead (e.g., company names). Whether or not you choose to capitalize something depends largely on whether you think its prominence will increase clarity—an issue best left up to individual judgment!
When you use capitalized letters to begin items in a bulleted or numbered list.
Before you try to fix this issue, ask yourself what it is. Is the word starting a new sentence? If so, then leave it alone; otherwise, take care of it!As long as the first letter of a bulleted list item is capitalized and not followed by a period or other punctuation mark (such as an exclamation point or semicolon), you’re good to go. You can also use capital letters in numbered lists; they just need to be at the beginning of each item.
When you spell out numbers in uppercase.
You can usually ignore potential errors flagged by the www.grammarchecker.com when you spell out numbers in uppercase. For example, you can write “A few people showed up for the party,” but not “a 2 people showed up for the party.” If a word is spelled correctly, it will be underlined in red if it’s also a number spelled out as text.This is because of how computers think about language: they only know what they’ve been programmed to know. A computer doesn’t understand that there is nothing wrong with saying “there were two hours left until midnight” or “the temperature was 50 degrees outside,” so it flags these things as errors because there are times when English speakers do use something other than numerals when using numbers (such as writing out years).
When you have numbers in a sentence that uses figures for all numbers above nine.
You can use numbers in a sentence even if they are spelled out. For example, if you are writing about how many people attended your event, you might write “I invited 450 guests to my party!” This is fine because the number of guests is clear and straightforward—you didn’t need to spell out the number “four hundred fifty” to make it clear what it meant.If you have a longer list of numbers, however, then spelling it out would be better. For example: “There were three types of cookies at the bake sale: chocolate chip, snickerdoodle and pumpkin spice.” Here we don’t know whether you mean 3 or 30 so it’s best that we spell them out instead of using figures for this particular instance only (unless all other instances are spelled with figures).In general though there’s no reason not use figures in these cases—and besides that fact I think most people will appreciate how quickly and easily they can read through sentences like this!
You may have reason to spell words differently than what is flagged by the spelling and grammar checker, and it’s okay to ignore that.
You have every right to ignore spelling and grammar errors that the spell checker flags. The problem with the spelling and grammar checker is that it’s not always accurate, especially when determining whether a word should be capitalized or not.So, if you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll know when something sounds wrong in your writing. For example, if you type “the” before the name of an organization such as “The New York Times,” it will flag this as an error. That may be true for non-native English speakers who aren’t familiar with American English conventions, but for native English speakers this word order is perfectly acceptable in common usage. And since we are all writers (at least in some capacity), why not trust our own knowledge of how words should be spelled instead of trusting an algorithm?
Conclusion
We hope we’ve given you some insight into the ways your spelling and grammar checker can help you produce more accurate and professional-looking documents. But don’t let that stop you from being creative! If there are words that are spelled differently than what is flagged by the spelling and grammar checker, then ignore it—and use your best judgment about how to spell them correctly.
- Tags:
- grammar checker
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Get it on 
Download on the