Seven Things About Spellcheckers, Grammar Checkers and Mighty Thesauri

How to make them your servant, not your master.

In Had had and other tense moments I mentioned that the first thing I do with a new piece of software is to turn off the spelling- and grammar-checkers, and it’s also true that I almost never resort to online thesauri. But I did check that last plural in the Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors because of course I’m not convinced that I get everything right. Indeed, as supporter

Peter HOLMES

pointed out when he subscribed, I often fail to spot typos in occasional writing such as blog and social media posts, which Peter kindly attributed to my being human.

But there’s a reason I blogged years ago about how the Tyranno-Thesaurus must be mastered before it’s safe to employ - and not only for an excuse to post the thesaurused version of ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ which is attributed to John Raymond Carson:

Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific.
Loftily poised on the ether capacious,
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

More generally, I do think all these increasingly powerful and often intelligent tools need using with caution - but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them.