Journal: News & Comment

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The sad state of grammar

Have you ever wondered why the grammar checker in your word processor is so terrible? The reason is simple: there has been almost no research into improving it in a decade.

Bruce Wampler, who worked for one of the major grammar software developers in the early '90s, has written a summary of the situation. Essentially, the active development of grammar checkers from competing companies in the '80s and '90s died when Microsoft and WordPerfect bought two of the programs and built them into their word processors. They have spent nothing to make them any better since, and the remaining developers died off from a lack of customers.

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