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
    2016-05-18T22:22:15+00:00

    Please be very careful when referring to the legitimate use of a tool as a "technical crutch."

    ...

    I take issue NOT because MS should have time to tweak NEW functionality and "get it right" but because MS removed features in place for many, many years. I am left to assume the modification was arbitrary because I didn't see any notes justifying the removal of these features when I upgraded to 2016. I think they would have been bombarded with protests.

    I agree.

    My major pain with this issue is that MS removed this core functionality and did not provide any public notification that they had done it!  Saying that they are "working on it" to get it right is NOT good enough.  Yes, they need time to get it right, but that is development time.

    Frankly in 15 years as a professional programmer, if I had unilaterally removed such a significant chunk of functionality without any advance notice to my my users 2 things would have happened.  First, as soon as the problem was brought forward to my manager and the root cause was identified we would have implemented our "backout" plan to undo the change, returning the old functionality.  Then we could continue development on the new version of the functionality without impacting the users.  In other words, by Sept 2015 MS should have realized that they would not be able to finish the new version and should have re-installed old version.

    The other thing that would have happened would be that my manager would sit me down for a serious talking to.   In such a significant, public cluster-F*** someone should have been fired.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-05-17T02:13:58+00:00

    I need more than setting spaces, punctuation with quotes, and commas before and--I need to be able to set formal, colloquial, casual, etc. depending on the writing task. It was unconscionable for MS to remove the old functionality while it is working on a supposed upgrade.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-05-15T21:50:53+00:00

    Please be very careful when referring to the legitimate use of a tool as a "technical crutch."

    As KateAndrews responded, until you have clients who pay for and demand consistency in business writing, and look to YOU as the final set of editorial eyes, you cannot imagine the PAIN of suddenly realizing that the MS Word editor you've relied on for YEARS to catch such extremely tedious edits is missing this functionality ... especially in large documents that go out to the "world." And that you are close to submitting work containing inconsistencies - a NO NO for business/technical or academic writing.

    It's NOT about being an English major or how perfectly I can write: anyone, everyone makes mistakes. I also edit the writing of others who possess the subject matter expertise, and I'm expected to be the final bastion of defense to ensure documents are "clean." It makes ME look bad if I don't catch all the bloops this functionality highlighted. Worse still, my clients' discerning constituents perceive them as less professional when communications contain inconsistencies.

    I take issue NOT because MS should have time to tweak NEW functionality and "get it right" but because MS removed features in place for many, many years. I am left to assume the modification was arbitrary because I didn't see any notes justifying the removal of these features when I upgraded to 2016. I think they would have been bombarded with protests.

    I uninstalled 2016 and reverted back to 2013 ... and am waiting for a fix ... and waiting ... and waiting ...

    :o(

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