The usage panel

If “Grammar…” appears in the pop-up error message, one can left-click on it to open a panel with an explanation of the usage convention (in the vernacular, “grammar rule”) of which the program has detected a possible transgression. I call this panel the “usage panel” (an

homage to an august committee of this name, the 200 literati and scholars who evaluate acceptable word usage for the American Heritage Dictionary). By default, this panel of explanation appears down the right side of the program window, and the amount of

has chosen for the Word window that holds the document. Figure 9 below shows three examples of the panel.

The checker can detect an infinite number of specific potential errors, but the number of these explanatory panels is necessarily finite, and they link to the finite number of grammar rules coded into the program. The correlation of the number of usage panels is not one-to-one with the number of items in the checker’s menu of options, however, because some of the 35 items, as named in the checker and described in Chapter 6, are linked to more than one of these nearly 200 panels, triggering different explanations depending on the perceived nature of the detected error. The panel labeled “subject-verb agreement” below (on the left), for instance, is one of several that may appear under that name, each with a different explanation and set of examples.

It would not be possible to determine the exact number and content of the panels even after exhaustive research, because, absent a full set of the panels supplied by Microsoft, the researchers could never be sure they had triggered every panel. Heidorn mentions the number written into Word 97 as 125 parsing rules and “about 200 descriptor rules” (84, 92), but some rules, as we have seen, might prompt only pop-up error messages, with no option to generate this panel with further explanation. Running data for this study has triggered more than 120 unique panels from Word 2013, with new panels occasionally appearing as the research

continues. A test bank of texts containing still more errors would be likely to trigger additional unique panels, some of them for highly specific usage issues. For instance, in addition to a standard panel explaining clichés and one for colloquialisms, numerous one-topic explanations appear under the heading of each of these two categories (which are grouped together in one item, along with “Jargon,” in the checker menu). Colloquial uses of “like,” “got,” and “till” (instead of “until”) each receive their own dedicated explanation panels, to give only three examples which this research happened to unearth, with no way to estimate how many more of this type of unique error explanations there are. Most colloquialisms and clichés prompt one same standard explanation but offer in the white box specific, programmed suggestions for replacement phrases, such as “nuisance” for “pain in the neck”; “useless items” for “flotsam and jetsam”; and “temporary success” for “flash in the pan.” (To quantify the number of such expressions it can detect is beyond the scope of this research, but when the checker successfully finds such phrases, its detection of them and suggestions can be of significant use to writers, whether or not they chose to use the exact phrases offered.)

While it would be useful to the composition instructor to be able to evaluate the full set of panels, for pedagogical purposes, it is fortunately not necessary to see every one in order to perform analyses of their genre and register for this research, and we have more than enough of a data sample to allow for examination of characteristic features and language, as well as some other aspects of the panels, from those we do have. In correspondence answering my research questions about the usage panels, the Microsoft team currently redeveloping the checker for Word 2016 estimates that there were approximately 180 panels in the 2013 checker, confirming that a sample of more than 120 panels represents the majority of the data.

As evident in the three panels of Figure 9 above, the layout of this utterance that I call the usage panel begins with the heading Grammar, which is the label of all panels generated by the checker whether for “grammar” or “style” issues. The tiny arrow in the top right corner does not lead to content information, as some tiny arrows in Word do, but simply manages the possibility of reshaping the window – the panel can be moved to the left side of the document or transformed into a floating window like the pop-up error message, but bigger, to be placed anywhere on the open document. The tiny “X” next to the arrow closes the panel, when left- clicked.

Underneath the heading Grammar, the usage panel presents in blue the word or phrase deemed an error, quoting the writer’s document. If the problem is with punctuation, this line includes the word preceding the punctuation mark. Clicking on the rectangle Ignore will turn off the squiggle in the document and close the panel. The large white box that appears below

Ignore often presents a suggestion for how to correct the erroneous text, sometimes more than

rectangle Change, below the white box, accepts the suggested correction and closes the panel. If the program is not capable of offering a possible correction for the word, because the syntax of the sentence makes it too difficult for the checker to parse, the white box simply offers the name of the rule (shown again below the box), as in, “Fragment (consider revising),” as in Figure 10, below, in the example on the left.

Sometimes the white box offers more than one option for a possible correction, in which case the user can click on the line with a preferred suggestion to highlight it, before clicking on

Figure 10. Two usage panels, one without and one with suggested corrections

Change to accept that correction (or, alternatively, double-clicking on the suggestion). This type

of panel, in an example refusing singular “they,” is in Figure 10 above, on the right.

Below a thin grey line comes a grammar mini-lesson. It begins with of the name of the convention that the ostensible error transgressed, sometimes using grammar terminology (as in

Subject-Verb Agreement in the earlier Figure 9), sometimes naming the problem words which the

explanation of the usage convention. Some are shorter or longer, but in those three examples they average 20 words and are of typical length. Some explanations rely on schoolbook grammar terms, as these do, and some avoid them – hearkening back to the divide on the question of grammar terminology as discussed in Chapter 3. (Chapter 7 will examine this issue in further detail, when analyzing the register of the checker language). Finally, the message panel then offers examples of incorrect and corrected sentence – usually two pairs, sometimes three pairs – to demonstrate to the user how the logic of the convention, as explained, applies to language in use. It introduces the rule-breaking sentences with Instead of and the rule-

conforming sentences with Consider, gently suggesting to the writer that she might want to reconsider her usage.