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

[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.