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

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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.

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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

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-09-28T05:21:13+00:00

    I'd love to sign up for the Office Insider program, just to get the grammar and style checker back. But the instructions that Nicole and the link she provided don't work for me. No "Insider tile" appears for me. I guess you have to be an "insider" to be able to see the "Insider" sign up!  ;)

    <grin> sorry I can't provide much help with that. All I can do is give you this link, and hope it works better for you:

    https://products.office.com/en-us/office-insider 

    (I also hope it is different than the one you tried, I didn't bother to look to see what link you are referring to ... too many pages to look through).

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-09-29T17:05:05+00:00

    I don't understand why it takes so long to update a feature that was already in Word and working well. This conversation has been going on over a year and is very frustrating. I'm in my last semester of graduate school, and it sounds like I will not have the update before the semester is over. I'm not a tech guru, so when people have referred to reverting back to Word 2013 that sounds like a lot of work. I am also afraid of something going wrong in the process. I am a 365 University user, and I still haven't seen grammar and style check update in Word. I thought this would update automatically. Do you have any suggestions?

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-09-29T17:38:09+00:00

    Don't hold your breath waiting for MS to implement this fix. As you've noted, it has been vaporware for a year now with no real hope in sight.  Sorry Nicole, but that is how it appears from this side of the keyboard. And even when it is finally delivered, there is no guarantee that it will work as well as the old one did. New code, new errors, for SURE!

    Why so long? Because a program manager over promised and his workers were simply were not able to deliver.  Apparently MS decided to rip out and replace the whole grammar checking system.  Think about how hard it was in school to learn all of the grammar rules for English. The English Language is a "rube goldberg device" that has been built using bits and pieces from almost every other language in the world over the last 1000+ years.   Lots of stupid rules and exceptions.

    There are only 2 "fixes" I know of for this problem:

    1. Upgrade back to 2013 ("Vote with your feet")
    2. Use an external grammar checker

    Although it sounds scary, upgrading back to 2013 is probably the simplest and best fix. That is assuming you don't need any of the new features in 2016 ... Office has been designed from the ground up to make it simple and safe to uninstall and re-install while maintaining all of your customizations.  And 365 actually makes it simpler.  Read through the instructions again. Do a dry run (don't actually do the install) on the process to get 2013 and let us know about any steps that are causing you concerns.

    Or you can use an external tool to do the grammar check. The only one I've seen recommended so far is Grammarly, but I have no personal experience with it.

    2016 06 01- Free Grammar Checker – Grammarly

    http://www.worldstart.com/free-grammar-checker/print

    <snip>

    I’ve had my eye on the site Grammarly for a long time, but it’s always been a pay for service, so I’m delighted that they’ve released a free version!

    The free version is Grammarly Editor. It is an automated proofreader that will check your writing for over 250 different common grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and more! It’s available for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Word.

    I’ve been using it at home on my desktop computer to help catch spelling errors in abstracts that I’m cataloging for work, and I have to say I’m really  impressed with the free version.

    If you look at the image on the main page, you’ll see that it shows words underline in either green or red. That indicates places where Grammarly suggests there is an error. It could be a spelling, punctuation, or grammar error. If you click on it in text the suggested correction for the error, and then if you agree with the correction you can just click and it will autocorrect it.

    You also have the option of clicking the red circle at the bottom of the document to deal with all the errors Grammarly found at one time. I like this option, because it feels more efficient.

    https://www.grammarly.com/ ^[1]^

    ~Amanda

    </snip>

    Actually, there is a third option.  Switch to a different word processor. But that introduces a whole new learning curve.

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