Checking style in proofing in Word 2016

Anonymous

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

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Anonymous

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

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:

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

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:

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

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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658 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-12-23T05:26:17+00:00

Hi Nicole, I can't tell you how disappointed I am that you folks introduced Word 2016 WITHOUT the equivalent grammar checking capabilities of the older version. I was using Word 2010 until a few days ago, and I was incredulous to find that 2016 doesn't have the same very useful capabilities of the earlier versions. Now I'm going to use 2010 to proof my document, but you have lost a (no kidding) 30 year supporter of Microsoft products. As a former CIO, I introduced MS products to a 2000 user company at a time when there was a choice, in the mid-90s. Things like passive voice detection are a terrific help to me (I write in the social sciences, although much of my education was in the quantitative sciences, where the passive voice is use more frequently). I am saddened to say I'll use 2010 until you add the same capability into 2016, which was obviously rushed into the market. I've read the forums and seen the arguments, and frankly, I smell a rat. I've been watching MS for decades and this is the first time I've been really ... upset with you folks.
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Stefan Blom 351.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2015-12-22T21:05:04+00:00

Surprisingly many "rules" that we all have been taught turn out to be over-simplified or even incorrect.
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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2015-12-22T15:56:33+00:00

I probably should not bother to reply to a poster who thinks "Your joking" or "journalist are" is correct grammar, but I will just point out that I am not a "kid" (71 my last birthday); I am in fact a copy editor and possess numerous style manuals, none of which state categorically that either split infinitives or beginning a sentence with a conjunction is always wrong. Indeed, most debunk these myths. Moreover, some journalists are very good writers; unfortunately, most newspapers can no longer afford copy editors, so the faults of those who are not are very obvious.

I don't use the grammar/style checker at all--I trust my instincts more than software--but I am not making light of the problem for those who do want to use it. The bottom line, however, is that the question that started this thread has been answered many times over: the style options are not currently available; they will be added back at an undetermined future date that comes closer the longer we wrangle about it.
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