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: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-27T18:20:37+00:00

    Hi breyed

    Thanks a lot for your feedback.

    I just wanted to clarify what errors the grammar checker in Word will find vs. not find.

    For each grammar error a separate rule needs to be implemented to target the type of error. Since it's not feasible to implement a rule for every potential grammar error (this would be an infinite set, since one can build an infinite set of sentences in a given language), we choose to target grammar errors which people most often make according to real world data we collected. That's why for example nonsense sentences are not highlighted by the grammar checker. We have no rule to target such errors since they are very infrequent or non-existing in real world user data. We also currently don't have a rule to target Pronoun Case errors and "To who shall I write?" is therefore not caught.

    If you go to File/Options/Proofing and click the Settings button under Writing Style, you see what grammar rules are available. E.g. Subject Verb Agreement is one of them. Please note however, that the Grammar checker won't be able to find every possible Subject Verb agreement error. Grammar Checking is very difficult due to ambiguity inherent to language and complex syntax structures. There are many exceptions to most rules and the grammar checker tries to be careful to avoid highlighting a correct sentence which may be superficially similar to a sentence that contains an error. For example, consider this sentence:

    "Did you pick up my dish or the dog's?"  

    The word "dish" is not repeated anymore after "dog's", so the Grammar Checker needs to be able to identify that the writer means "the dog's dish". If it gets that wrong it may falsely highlight "dog's" and suggest "dogs" instead to create a sentence similar to "Did you pick up the dogs?"

    Please let us know which other grammar errors you frequently make and are not caught by our tools. We will consider adding more suggested grammar rules for future updates.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-02T13:57:28+00:00

    The grammar checker has got worse in 2016.

    If you type in "You're welcome" it wants to change it to YOUR welcome. What is up with THAT?

    I even opened a ticket with Microsoft to let them know there was an issue and their initial response was to do a repair on the install. I have it installed on 2 machines and they both have the same problem.

    Then a few minutes later they emailed me and told me they were archiving the problem and told me to send my question to this forum. How does that help me. I know I can 'ignore' the phrase, but since when did you're welcome ever become your welcome in the English language except by people who obviously did poorly in English class?

    I'm done venting. Maybe Microsoft can get it right when the update comes out.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-03T01:17:38+00:00

    Thank you for your response. This was a huge surprise and directly effects me, as I rely on this needed in graduate school.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments