It's English, Jim, but not as we know it!

[ffutures]

I just noticed that Word underlined the second "She's" in the sentence below as a grammatical error:

“She's a looker,” said Alan. “Brains and beauty, and she's studying engineering. If I was about thirty years younger…”

Can anyone think of any conceivable way that the recommended correction, to "she are" can possibly be right? Or why "looker" is flagged as a spelling mistake?

And is "If I was" correct? I'm sort of thinking "If I were" would be more grammatical, but that one isn't being flagged as an error.

Comments

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

The "she's" is flagged as a grammatical error because Word thinks that there are three people studying engineering; Brains (from Thunderbirds), Beauty (from Beauty and the Beast), and She (Who Must Be Obeyed, aka Ayesha, from the H. Rider Haggard novel). An Oxford comma after 'brains' fixes it.

If you take the recommended option for "looker", and change it to "lookers", it flags it as a grammatical error and suggests "looker". If you accept that change it stops red-lining "looker".

"Was" and "were" are both correct but most people would say "was" and so, as it's in speech, I'd say leave it as it is.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, that makes more sense. Thanks!

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

And, of course, it couldn't be "She is studying engineering" because that would be an Abomination.

I like using "were", but it is a dying construct.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

As to the first point, my guess is that Word is parsing the sentencde as a series of three parallel nouns: Brains and beauty and she are studying engineering.

As to the second, in the American English that I use, "If I were" would be correct, because the clause expresses a false-to-fact antecedent supposition supporting an elided hypothetical conclusion ("I'd be trying to get into her pants" or "I'd ask her to marry me" or something in between). The conditional "would" in the consequent requires a subjunctive "were" in the antecedent (expressed by using a different form of the verb, as English doesn't actually have separate subjunctive forms any more). My experience with British English has been that the subjunctive has almost entirely dropped out, so perhaps Word is accepting it as British usage. (I'm surprised to see you using the form that sounds more grammatical to my ear, but perhaps (a) I don't really get all the subtleties of the British verb or (b) you speaking a more formal British English than the current vernacular.)

Though it's equally possible that Word was programmed by someone ignorant of grammatical analysis. I've seen lots of evidence of that in using Word for preliminary checks of manuscripts I edit!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'm trying to write a older American character, but the spell check etc. is of course set for British English, I'd forgotten that.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Grammar checkers are sufficiently lame that it may just think you're using the word too many times.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

I take this as evidence that if you are a reasonably proficient writer, grammar checkers are worse than useless.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That is actually not the case. I've been a professional copy editor since around 1988, but when I get an online manuscript to edit, the first thing I do is spell and grammar check. It actually catches a lot of the dumb mistakes faster and more consistently. I do it again at the end, in case I've introduced errors while fixing other things, too.

It's just that what earns my pay is the other 95% that I do in between.