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Bill Davy Bill Davy is offline
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Default Fix Word's handling of collective nouns "staff" and "crowd"

From a newsgroup:

Word 2000 seems to handle it correctly, though.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
Bill

Not fixable. It is still present in W2007 too.

Staff (and crowd) are collective nouns, so 'the staff is' and 'the

crowd is'
are both correct. The grammar checker happily accepts 'is or are' with
crowd - but with staff, the checker accepts neither as correct.

Both the handling of crowd and staff are inconsistent and daft.

--
Terry Farrell - MS Word MVP

"Bill Davy" wrote in message
...
In fact, the grammar checker seems to have green twiddlyitis with

the
following:



The staff are happy. "staff are" have twiddles (suggests "staff is"

but
see below)

Staff are happy. "staff are" have twiddles (suggests "Staff is" or
"Staffs are"

Staff is happy. "Staff" has twiddles (suggests "staffs").

The staff is happy. "Staff" has twiddles (suggests "staffs" but see
above).

A staff is happy. "A staff" has twiddles (suggests "Staffs")



Is it fixable? How?



Word 2003 SP2.









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Herb Tyson [MVP] Herb Tyson [MVP] is offline
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Default Fix Word's handling of collective nouns "staff" and "crowd"

The real problem is that the staff can't possibly be happy if they're using
the grammar checker. ;-)

If there's such a thing as artificial intelligence, then the grammar checker
is an example of artificial ignorance. It gives me incorrect and bad advice
much more often than it gives good/correct advice, so I keep it turned off.
It applies rigid rules and doesn't seem to be able consistently to
distinguish verbs and nouns in context. Until it can, it's a novelty that is
only occasionally correct.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com


"Bill Davy" wrote in message
...
In fact, the grammar checker seems to have green twiddlyitis with

the
following:



The staff are happy. "staff are" have twiddles (suggests "staff is"

but
see below)


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