The writing assistance company Grammarly advertises a lot, and I guess they've gotten pretty successful. As a result, it appears that Microsoft Word is trying to imitate their services. That means a lot of "helpful" advice in the form of a crinkly blue line that underlines your words whenever you write something that strikes the algorithm as ungainly or wordy.
The thing is, yes, I agree that it's better in general to be economical in your word choices. But having every stray modifier flagged while you're in the process of writing is distracting. Sometimes you have to figure out what you want to say first before you start the process of trying to say it better.
So I've pretty much turned off grammar check and am happy for it. Not spell check, though. That's a necessity.
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"Sometimes when I think of that little soul I grow quite lachrymose."
~ Stephen Maturin in The Thirteen Gun Salute by Patrick O'Brian
Wondering what a grammar check program might make of the above sentence I pasted it into 'Online Editor' (Grammarly having to be downloaded). I thought perhaps it might offer a simpler word like sad, tearful or even weepy as a replacement for lachrymose. I was happy to see that except for noting their preferred punctuation the program accepted the statement. What it did discover, though, was that there was significant plagiarism. Hah!
I understand your point that having such a program running in the background could be very disruptive of the creative process - much like trying to compose a report with the teacher looking over a kid's shoulder. Annoying, to say the least.
I got rid of spell check on my text edit program because it red lined words when I used English spelling. Depending on who I'm writing to where I like to be free to type 'neighbour' rather than 'neighbor', or 'ise' to 'ize'. I do make the occasional typo as you've probably noticed, but it's a price I'm willing to pay.
Archaic words in literature can broaden our understanding of not only how the particular example came to be but also how different were interpretations in other times.
Ah, so Online Editor has read the Aubrey & Maturin books. Good for it! And I guess it's a good thing that it let "lachrymose" stand. Thus far these programs and apps don't seem to be hung up on $5 words, although there's always the chance that it won't be recognized.
Yeah, that kind of distraction is irritating to me. It's possible that there's a generational element to this. I'm accustomed to having time to think things out on my own, a result of both being an introvert and growing up in the time before cell phones and a generally accessible internet. Maybe kids who have grown up with a higher technology level just accept that there will always be a constant stream of electronic suggestions from nowhere.
Spell checking features (Spellcheck and others) do seem to penalize for British spellings, at least in this country. I'm able to get away with spelling "grey" with an "e", but you'd better not try to end a verb with "ise", except for "praise", maybe.
Yeah, language changes in small ways and large all the time. We mostly don't notice the changes as they're happening, only in retrospect.
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