Dear RS:

You wrote:

I downloaded a demo of Grammar Slammer Deluxe with Checkers. My experience has not been good. It appears to me that the program has a serious flaw that I cannot live with. I have large Word text documents. When I paste one of them in the Grammar and Spelling Checker and begin everything runs smoothly. No less than six times my data and its corrections disappeared when my mouse clicked on the document, or when I clicked on copy full document…Gone forever.

There appears to be no way to restore the corrected file or to find it again. I have looked at your instructions and unless I am overlooking something, find no solution to this issue. I cannot imagine one click of the mouse on the document deletes everything and there is no recovery option.
>

Do not try to edit the text while the checkers are running. You may edit the text box all you want if they are not running. To make it as compatible as possible with as many Windows applications as possible, you may edit the
text manually or with the checkers, just not both at the same time.

Our instructions read:
‘Do not attempt to edit the main text in the original window while the checkers are running. If you do this, and you lose the text, close the checker. The “Undo Delete” or “Paste” function from the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click or when you choose “Edit” on the main text box should restore the uncorrected text.’

Dear Mr. G:

You wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Do your products use correct English or American? As an example, will this
> suggest the incorrect term, “gotten” as being a current correct English (as
> does Microsoft Word grammar check?
>
In virtually all cases English and American grammar are the same. This is true for all but a small number of spelling instances. We do have a page on the differences and try to summarize most of them. A sample of this page can be seen at https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000186.htm. Our Grammar Slammer Deluxe with Checkers has both British and American dictionaries for the spelling checker and settings in the grammar checker for that you can change for the few items that do differ.

I also recommend taking a look at our page https://englishplus.com/news/news0299.htm for an article on what you can and cannot expect from grammar and spelling checkers.

Thanks for your input. I was trying to minimize the differences.
>
> I will beg to differ; English is far more different than most might realise.
> Indeed, there are a lot of Americans and British who converse with each
> other without realizing that that their communications are being taken in a
> very different way than intended. I have lived in the USA for many years
> and still I find new differences, and things that I have been
> misunderstanding through the years.
>
> American vs. British Grammar (oxymoron) URL,
> https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000186.htm I think that Sir Winston
> Churchill’s quote was English humour, misunderstood in the translation to
> American (bearing in mind his mother was American). I do not see the BBC
> ending sentence with a preposition.

I understand that, but the “rule” was an artificial one nevertheless.

>
> Maths (not math) was my strong suit; typical of an engineer, Shamefully, I
> had little interest in English other than report writing, until moving to
> the US. It was trying to understand why Americans had bastardised the
> language more than others and how it reached this point that really got me
> interested in my own language. Hearing American television presenters
> crucifying the language that they describe as English made me cringe.
> Announcing the weeks “Winingest team” is not correct English.

I’m not crazy about “winningest” either. That term and ones like it often are first coined by advertisers.

A lot of the differences can actually be traced back to England. More early settlers of the US northeast were settled by people from East Anglia. The US southeast had many Scotch-Irish. But languages change over time and
distance. Considering we have gone our own ways for two hundred years, we are a lot closer than, say, the English of London in 1350 and 1600.

>
> I have learned that the greatest problem is the misapprehension that the
> English (and broader the British) and Americans speak use the same language.
> If grammatical rules are to be quoted in the name of being English, then
> there is one that is correct. That is English! But this is not saying that
> “knowing where it is at” is bad American, just bad English.
>
“Where it’s at” was originally coined deliberately knowing it was redundant.As a youngster, I recall viewing it as a grammatical joke. However popular songs (from both sides of the Atlantic, if I recall correctly) seemed to have made it easier to tolerate. Where replaces the prepositional phrase, so even Americans would consider this nonstandard, or at best colloquial. See our https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000179.htm .

My experience has been that most actual British-American misunderstanding comes from vocabulary (bonnet vs. hood, torch vs. flashlight, pants vs. underwear, that sort of thing).

> This site may be of interest and if I understand correctly, does much for
> English, as it seems your product does for American.
>
> http://www.the-times.co.uk/styleguide/ The Times Style Guide aims to provide
> a quick reference to contentious points of grammar and spelling and to guide
> through specialised areas where confusions have arisen in the past. The
> alphabetical list covers the main points from previous style guides as well
> as recurring problems experienced by editorial staff
>
This is excellent. I will carry a link to this on my site. (It may take a
few days before it gets posted). Thank you for calling my attention to it.

Dear Mr. D:

You wrote:

> I’d like to find out how Grammar Slammer with Checkers works. Does it replace the grammar checker
> that Word uses or is this a separate reference guide?
>
Grammar Slammer is a separate reference guide. Sometimes the grammar checker
will ask you questions or give directions that you are not sure about. Use
Grammar Slammer to find out what to do. Also good for teaching and learning
grammar, letter writing, and usage difficulties. Grammar Slammer Deluxe with Checkers contains all this
plus full-featured grammar and spelling checkers you can use with most Windows editors including Word.

Try downloading a trial copy from our download page at https://englishplus.com/pub/ to see what they contain and what they can do for you.

>Hi
>I am a older woman in college and need help with grammar and spelling
> is there any free things on here that can help me with my letter
> writing. I would appreciate any help.
>
>
The free stuff is on our web site. Go to https://englishplus.com/grammar/ for
a pretty complete directory of English grammar usage and problems and a
section on letter writing.

For more detailed material for your personal computer, check out downloads
of sample programs at https://englishplus.com/pub/.

Dear NC:

You wrote:

> I WAS WONDERING IF U HAVE A THING ON UR SITE THAT EXPLAINS IF U PUT A COMMA
> AFTER 3 THINGS IN A SEQUENCE…
>
> AND IF U DO, WHAT IS IT CALLLED AND WHAT WOULD IT BE UNDER ON YOUR SITE?
>
> THANX….
>
Look up “Commas in a Series” under “Comma Rules.”

Dear C:

You asked:

>Do you have a program for homonyms?

Our Grammar Slammer Deluxe programs and our free-standing e-book Spelling Slammer include confusing words overlooked by spell checkers, so that means they include a lot of homonyms. There is a small sample on the Grammar Slammer demo available at https://englishplus.com/pub/ . The complete programs or e-book include over 1100 words, many of which are homonyms or near homonyms.

I hope this helps.

Dear T:

You wrote:

Thank you so much for your information on letter writing. It really helped me.

Sincerely,
T
High School Sophomore

Glad to help. You are just the person we wrote Grammar Slammer for.

Your website is poorly designed and structured. There should be a contact page with address and email. It took me too long to find an unoticeable email link to write you this message.

Also, the grammar software in .zip format is completely unprofessional. Still, desperate as I am to find decent grammar software I tried downloading a trial version from download.com . I installed it and all that was there was 2 help files, no software. If you claim that the help files are the only files originally supposed to be there then don’t advertise it as software. And, if download.com wants to publish your software it is your responsiblity to make sure it is as full of a version that is allowed, all the proper files are included (install, help, interface) etc.

Dear M:

We have a contact page, www.englishplus.com/contact.htm . There are links to it on several other pages including our home page. Do you have a suggestion for making the page more accessible?

Most Windows software posted on the Internet to my knowledge is in ZIP archives. Is there a more professional way to do it?

We have posted two different Grammar Slammer packages. The basic Grammar Slammer package must be one you downloaded. That is an English grammar reference which uses the Windows Help file format. That would be for users who have no need of a grammar or spelling checker but would like a handy grammar reference in a familiar format. It is also available in Adobe PDF format for non-Windows users, as well as formats for Kindle, I-Phone, I-Pad, and other “e-readers.”

We also have Grammar Slammer with Checkers. In addition to the reference files, it also has a copy-and-paste Windows English grammar and spelling checker which is integrated with the help file. That may be closer to what you are looking for. It is only available in Windows. You can download that from www.englishplus.com/pub/ . There is a link for both an EXE installation file as well as a ZIP file.

I hope this helps. We appreciate any suggestions that you may have to make our web site clearer.

Dear Mr. M___:

You wrote:

>>Does your Grammar Slammer with Checkers work with Windows XP?

Yes. It works with all versions of Windows from 95 up. As of this date that includes Windows 7.

>>How does this program compare to checkers in Word or Grammatik?

All use slightly different patterns. The grammar checker in Grammar Slammer gives the user many easy options. Probably the best thing for you to do is download a trial copy from our download site at https://www.englishplus.com/pub/ and see how you like it.

Be sure to read the file that comes with it, “What to Expect from a Grammar Checker.” This will give you an idea of what anyone’s grammar program can and cannot do. You can also read this online at https://englishplus.com/news/readthis.htm.

Dear Mr. T___:

You wrote:

>>I like your software that I’m trying out, except I found that I cannot delete any of the characters. The only way that I can remove a letter is to cursor to the end of the word and then use the back-space key to remove unwanted text. Delete key does not work.
>
>
We have been aware of this. This is a “feature” of the Windows system that we can do nothing about without turning the checker into another word processor. We recommend using another text editor or word processor that has more capability and just copying and pasting. We want to keep the actual text box as simple as possible so that it will be compatible with as many Windows programs as possible. That means some extraneous things will be sacrificed.

Having said that, the delete key does work on anything that is highlighted first. So if you highlight any letters or words, you can use the delete key.