Dear Dr. D:

You wrote:

Dear English Plus,

I recently found the Grammar Slammer, and I really like the idea. This can be invaluable to me and lots of other folks. I have had a few problems with it that I want to tell you about. It has given me some bad error notices and recommendations.

text: … Ed will incorporate …
GS says: “will” conflicts with verb “incorporate”
No, this really just intended to say that Ed will do this action, but GS missed the meaning and gave a false error indication.

text: … an Electromechanical …
GS says: use “a” before words that begin with consonants
Last time I looked, E was a vowel.

text: … an Executive …
GS says: use “a” before words that begin with consonants
GS recommends: a Executive
This is plain wrong.

text: … an EML
GS says: use “a” before words that begin with consonants
GS recommends: a EML
This is plain wrong.

text: … to realize high reliabilty while facilitating development …
text identified by GS: reliability while
GS says: subject “reliability” conflicts with verb “while”
GS suggests
high reliability whiles
high reliabilities while
GS just missed the mark all the way around here.

text: … then will adapt …
GS says: subject “will” conflicts with verb “adapt”
GS suggests
then will adapts
then wills adapt

I hope that this little bit of feedback will be useful.

Thanks for the input. This illustrates the limitations of grammar checkers. If you have not done so, please read the file “What to Expect from Grammar Programs” that comes with Grammar Slammer Deluxe with Checkers. I can tell you what the checker did in each case. It was wrong, but it gave you the choice of changing or not changing. There is little that can be done about it.

Three cases are “Possible subject-verb mismatches” with the verb “will.” “Will” is sometimes a noun, so the checker is making sure it is not a conflict. Clearly, none of these are, so you simply click “ignore.” If you get this a lot and find it annoying, simply uncheck “Subject-Verb Agreement” under “Grammar Options” button.

Similarly, “while” is sometimes a verb, so there would be a conflict if it were a verb. Since it is not a verb in this sentence, you can click “Ignore.”

The other example, with “an” plus “EML” is a bug. Your note alerted me to the fact that any word with a capital vowel preceded by “an” is going to be picked up. Again, you can just “Ignore” it, but it will show up. This may not be something we can easily correct because it connected with the Windows DLL which we use. At least capitals following “an” are rare. Most of the time the capitalized word would be a name, so it would not have an indefinite article. We will look into it, and thank you for pointing this out.

For more on the use and limits of Grammar Checkers see https://englishplus.com/news/readthis.htm.