Checking style in proofing in Word 2016

Anonymous
2015-09-25T02:30:46+00:00

What happened to being able to check style in Word 2016 when proofing (number of spaces after a sentence, contractions, hyphenated words, etc.)??

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2017-03-15T13:09:13+00:00

Those Style Options in Editor which were also part of earlier Office versions (e.g. Passive Voice) are now available for Office 2016 Click-to-Run perpetual users in Office build 16.0.7870.2020 and newer builds. New Grammar and Style options and other ongoing enhancements to the experience, will continue to be exclusively offered through an Office 365 subscription. 

The "Grammar & More" Writing Style is not available in the drop down yet. To enable the Style Options in Word, go to File -> Options -> Proofing and click on the "Settings…" button next to the Writing Style drop down "Grammar". The Grammar Settings window will pop up where you can customize the checks. You will first see the available Grammar Options and when you scroll down, you will see the Style Options starting with Options for "Clarity & Conciseness".

Just check the checkbox next to the Options you'd like to enable.

Was this answer helpful?

1 person found this answer helpful.
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2016-10-05T10:36:32+00:00

Hi

I can finally announce that the update is now available to all Office for Windows subscription users.

Apologies for the delay. The monthly updates always contain several new features or improvements and delays can unfortunately occur for many different reasons.

The English Style options are now available to all Windows Word and Outlook subscription users with Office build 16.0.7369.2024 or newer.

Office for Mac subscription Insiders Fast users are scheduled to receive the update with build 15.28.0.161004 or newer.

We appreciate your feedback. Please let us know if you see false flags (= incorrect flags/unexpected flags), missed flags or incorrect suggestions.

The Writing Style “Grammar & more” is now on by default. All Grammar Options and the two new Options “Wordiness” and “Nominalizations” are enabled. If you like to enable more Style Options, follow these steps:

In Word 2016:

  1. Go to "File" -> "Options" -> "Proofing"
  2. If the Writing Style is not "Grammar & more", please change to "Grammar & more" using the drop down.
  3. Click on “Settings”

  1. Only two Options ("Wordiness, Nominalizations") are enabled by default. You can enable more Options by ticking the checkbox next to them:

 

To enable the feature in Outlook, please do the following:

In Outlook 2016:

  1. From a popped-out mail window, go to "File" -> "Options" -> "Mail". (Don't do this from the main Outlook window.)
  2. Click on "Spelling and Autocorrect…" in the section "Compose messages". You'll be taken to the "Proofing" tab of the "Editor Options" dialog.
  3. If the Writing Style is not "Grammar & more", please change to "Grammar & more" using the drop down.
  4. Check the checkbox next to "Mark grammar errors as you type" in the "When correcting spelling in Outlook" section.

  1. To enable more Style Options, please follow steps 3.) and 4.) described for Word above.

We've also included many bug fixes in this update.

We're working on improving the Grammar Checker further and will release more Options in the coming months.

Thanks, Nicole

Was this answer helpful?

0 comments

658 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-20T11:44:17+00:00

    Thanks again for your feedback. Passive voice is on the list as well and will be added as part of the update.

    All features and options need maintenance, regular updates, re-implementation for new versions of Office etc. and are therefore always accompanied with a considerable amount of investment. Features which are used only by a very small amount of users may occasionally be removed in favor of investing more in another more popular feature or for example to replace them with features which are requested by many users.

    As explained earlier, the English Grammar Checker had to be ported to different technology for several reasons, which means that every single rule needs to be implemented from scratch. We want to make sure we prioritize the rules which are most useful. We received negative feedback on some of the rules, for example the one that alerts you to Fragments, but doesn't provide any suggestions, instead asks you to consider revising (Fragment (consider revising)). To make the rules more helpful, we want to focus on rules where we can provide a correction suggestion.

    Apologies again for this inconvenience caused. We expect to have an update ready by the start of next year to release to Subscription users.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-20T05:20:46+00:00

    Yes, the Oxford Comma is on the list as well. Since we have to implement each rule from scratch the development takes time. In the meantime you can downgrade to Office 2013 to have the previous version of the English Grammar Checker. Customer Service can help you with that. I'm not familiar with the steps to downgrade to Office 2013.

    Any idea as to when these changes will occur?  If it's going to be a while, I will be going back to 2013 and possibly even cancelling my Office 365 subscription until I see the changes have been made.

    While they're at it, could they also add back in the autocorrect options they removed in 2013 so we don't have to use a workaround to access the old "ignore rule" feature?

    MS is a big company.  They need to learn what are improvements and what aren't!  GuyWithQuestion below said it perfectly, "Removing options would never be an improvement."

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-10-19T22:48:09+00:00

    Detection of Passive Voice should also be on your list of options that need to be re-instated.  Basically the entire proofing package from 2013 needs to be brought back.  I do not see why removing options would ever be considered an improvement.  If people choose not to use extra options, that is up to them.  As it stands now, we are stuck with no choice at all.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments