That ever-reliable grammar check

A University of Washington student turns in a paper riddled with grammatical errors. Her professor rightly chides her, but she rolls out (what she thinks is) a good defense: She ran the paper through Microsoft Word's grammar check.

So the marketing and e-commerce prof took his chiding to Microsoft and said: "Microsoft the company should big improve Word grammar check." Word had no problem with that.

But don't be too hard on Sandeep Krishnamurthy. He's also trying to get the word out to students.

"If you're a grad student turning in your term paper, and you think grammar check has completely checked your paper, I have news for you -- it really hasn't," he said.

An article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer includes some passages the professor has gotten through the grammar check unflagged:

Marketing are bad for brand big and small. You Know What I am Saying? It is no wondering that advertisings are bad for company in America, Chicago and Germany. ... McDonald's and Coca Cola are good brand. ... Gates do good marketing job in Microsoft.

People seem to agree that the grammar check in Work can improve quite a bit. However, said Christopher Manning, assistant professor of linguistics and computer science at Stanford University, "it still wouldn't be as good as a good human editor."

Krishnamurthy has some examples of errors that fly by undetected on his Web page.