Hot answers tagged spelling-checker
20
When used as a stand-alone sentence, you're right:
1) Where should this car be parked? <-- correct
2) Where this car should be parked?
Now... if it's part of a larger sentence it's different:
1) Do you know where should this car be parked?
2) Do you know where this car should be parked? <-- correct
I would speculate that either ...
17
As you said, it means "kind of". It's very informal and you won't find it in dictionaries. In formal contexts, you can use "rather" with the same meaning, e.g.:
It was rather cold.
Note:
"kind of" is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (see below). "Kinda" is not.
Definition:
1: to a moderate degree
2: in a way that approximates : more
...
13
No. It is not (necessarily) a typo. The following examples are all perfectly acceptable uses (at least grammatically) of the possesive form of women.
Women's rights
Women's work
Women's intuition
Women's gossip
I am unable to answer your question about whether or not Firefox is sexist.
13
Anglo-Norman Kings, having conquered Saxon England started collecting taxes methodically (The "Doomsday Book" is a famous example).
For accounting, they were using a large board with rows and columns not unlike a chessboard "un échiquier" in French (from Persian origin imported via Latin).
The responsible for this task was therefore named "Chancellor of ...
13
The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) has 1650 incidences of kinda:
TOTAL SPOKEN FICTION MAGAZINE NEWSPAPER ACADEMIC
1650 172 1023 244 169 42
It is used overwhelmingly in fiction, and the few examples in newspapers and academic texts are almost exclusively in quotations of spoken English.
So, as the other answers have said, ...
10
This is most likely a case of dictionaries having not caught up with an industry's lingo or jargon. Here are a few examples of using refactor:
You can also refactor other things besides formal expression languages. Like DocumentRefactoring. I refactored this definition several times in order to group similar ideas into their related paragraphs. Of ...
10
The spelling vendor is the standard spelling. The New Yorker, as part of its bizarre house style, uses the spelling vender. No one else does, besides those trying to emulate The New Yorker’s style.
Of the 45 examples in COCA, only 17 were actual uses of the spelling vender outside of The New Yorker (compared with over 2000 examples of vendor, a ratio of ...
9
Can you think of any other words that end in -itely that are pronounced the same? I think the majority of them end in -ately, e.g. alternately, indiscriminately, fortunately, intimately. Therefore, people uninterested in spelling irregularity will intuitively spell it “definately” because it seems more plausible if you don’t know better.
Edit: Just thought ...
9
It does mean what you want to say, possibly, but it's not the clearest way of saying it.
Performant is being increasingly used, therefore it deserves to be considered a word. I still have misgivings about it though, largely because it seems redundant: you could instead say "fast" or "efficient".
If something's fast, why not just say so, instead of using the ...
8
I would say, "That's an SEP". Anyone who knows me would know what I mean.
In any event else's is perfectly fine. Dictionary.com's entry for else says, "other or in addition (used in the possessive following an indefinite pronoun): someone else's money."
8
Whether or not "performant" is actually a real word has been debated for some time.
It does not appear in the dictionary, nor does Google definitions include it.
While it has been used before and appears in wiktionary, I would tend to avoid using it until the word becomes, well...a word.
Is there any reason you could not use one of the following instead?
...
7
1. is right; 2. is wrong. The grammar checker probably got confused by the fact that if the question mark were omitted, it would be the other way round.
It may be possible to devise a computerised grammar for English that makes fewer mistakes than a schoolchild (always a good discussion topic in the bar), but Microsoft Word doesn't have one.
6
I would see this as an extension of the branch of linguistics called metalexicography which for decades has been examining people's use and perception of dictionaries and related works.
Practitioners of the field have long since noted phenomena which I think aren't in essence any different with modern electronic dictionaries/spellcheckers, whereby ...
6
First, apart from very rare exceptions, you should capitalize all words derived from a person’s name (see here and there, on this very site). It doesn't matter whether it's a noun, an adjective, a verb, anything. Just put a damn capital!
Now, for your specific case, two additional points in support of capitalization:
the New Oxford American Dictionary ...
5
If a dictionary has it, that dictionary is just trying to be so comprehensive as to include any word ever. However, incapable is the proper and original form, and furthermore, everyone uses it. I have never seen uncapable in use.
The rule of thumb to go by is: If you're choosing between variants of a word, pick the variant most widely used and ...
5
Wiktionary contains such words.
The entry for kinda (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kinda) includes:
kinda
(colloquial) kind of
I kinda hafta do this right now.
That's kinda funny.
4
Strictly speaking, "GPL" is a three letter acronym for GNU General Public License. (Note the AmE spelling.)
“GPL” stands for “General Public License”. The most widespread such license is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This can be further shortened to “GPL”, when it is understood that the GNU GPL is the one intended.
By the way, ...
4
Exposé is a French loanword. As such it uses the accent and is pronounced differently than the English verb "to expose".
Whether accented letters are formally part of the English alphabet might be up for debate, depending on how you define "formal".
Loanwords are not uncommon in English, and we try to keep the correct diacritical marks where it makes sense ...
4
The only correct spelling for the noun is exposé.
However, if you're on anything but a Mac, trying to key in characters with accents or other diacritical marks is an exercise in geekery.
(Edit: Merriam-Webster Unabridged lists the unaccented expose as an acceptable variant, in recognition of the keyboard gymnastics otherwise involved.)
4
Word is mistaken here. You are using "advise" as a verb, as it is an action you are asking someone to take. "advice" is a noun, and is the thing they will give to you. Your usage is correct.
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Advice_vs_Advise
http://www.translegal.com/common-mistakes/advise-vs-advice
http://www.learnenglish.de/mistakes/advicevsadvise.htm
4
The grammar checker is wrong. (When in doubt, always assume that the grammar checker is wrong.)
The verb to help takes a bare infinitive complement, which is the infinitive without the to. This is regardless of the number and person of the subjects.
They helped her find her lost dog.
I helped him write his paper.
He helped her learn to juggle.
...
4
OK is Ok, and Ok is OK.
Oh, also Oklahoma is OK. That's its USA postal code, so it's possible that your spell-checker is agnostic on the subject, and just thinks you are trying to use the state of Oklahoma in an address.
I upvoted @camelbrush's answer because it provides a good explanation of the logic behind why some folks prefer to capitalize both ...
3
Yes, refactor is the verb. This is actually elementary English grammar: refactoring is nothing more than the gerund (noun form) of the verb refactor, formed by adding the suffix -ing. In other words, refactor came first, and refactoring derives from it.
3
I just took a tour of some Canadian banking sites. Easy enough since we have so few.
Scotiabank offers Chequing accounts
CIBC offers Chequing accounts
TD made me drill around a bit and look under Canada Trust, but they too offer Chequing accounts. (Their American division offers Checking accounts)
Bank of Montreal offers Chequing accounts
Royal Bank, just ...
3
I've usually seen it used in combination form: spellchecker. The verb is spellcheck and it conjugates the same way check does. It's also used as spell checker, and I guess you can take your pick.
3
whoa
exclam.
used as a command to a horse to make it stop or slow down.
• informal used as a greeting, to express surprise or interest, or to command attention: whoa, that's huge!
NOAD
It's still whoa in all but Internet-speak.
3
The word "movie" is American English. If the spell checker is not set to American English, that would be the reason why. This relates to the discussion here: "Movies" vs. "Cinema" vs. "Theater" -- what's the difference?
3
If you are using Tipsy as a name, the possessive is Tipsy's. (If you're trying to make it some other kind of noun, it probably can't be done.) The grammar checker can't be expected to distinguish names from other words, so is telling you that you can't put 's on an adjective.
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