Little short sentences.
Like this one.
Drive my MS Word programme mad.
It doesn’t like it at all.
It says that they’re fragments, which is all well and good, but it doesn’t have any suggestions and sometimes fragments are actually OK.
Just like this one.
When the passive voice is used, a red squiggly line is shown beneath. Again Word seems to be rather quick with its opinions but slow with its suggestions.
To be fair, “The Elements of Style” book by William Strunk Jr and EB White, backs up the grammar guys at MS Word.
Rule number 14 is to “Use the active voice”, although they also say:
This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.
Note their perfect use of the humble comma; good grammar is a very attractive quality.
They also, unlike fussy old MS Word, offer suggestions and helpful advice.
Note my attractive use of the parenthetical comma.
Oh damn, I just noticed Rule 17: “Omit needless words”
Every single sentence in this post has a needless word.
If I followed this rule, I’d have to delete the whole entire complete total blog.
John Tomlinson 