From: Scott Martindale <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Grammar check for Mac users
Date: December 17, 2015 at 12:08:40 PM CST
To: LLTI <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>


Hello all!

Word 2016 for Mac (I will use "Mac" in place of the more accurate term "OS X" for readability since that is what Microsoft calls it) does not have feature parity with its Windows counterpart and nowhere is this felt more than in bilingual editing environments. This becomes an issue when your language students are nearly 80% Mac users.

Notably, Word 2016 for Mac is missing the Grammar check functionality for all languages except English : https://support.office.com/en-za/article/Proofing-tools-available-in-Office-2016-for-Mac-e175007d-193d-4efc-afce-5e27a59f1057

Here at my LRC, we don't have the option to put the Windows version of Word 2016 on the systems (via Bootcamp, virtualization, RemoteApp or any other fancy option) due to maintenance or support costs. I'm sure there are other schools out there in a similar situation and so my question is: how are recommending that students grammar-check their documents?

Attached is a screenshot of some of the more frequent issues (agreement, punctuation and accents) and how Word 2016 for Windows and Mac each treat them.

Here are the sentences in copy-and-pastable format:
La océano es grande.
Ella tiene ojos rojas.
Es cierto : no se.
Hay una problema con las mapas.
No vas a venir?
So again, my question is: are you recommending that students with Macs grammar-check their documents? If so, what is the solution that you are recommending?
Thanks for your time!

Best,
Scott

Richard “Scott” Martindale
LRC Director
University of Vermont
Southwick Bldg. Room 200B
Burlington, VT   05405
(802) 656-7856
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[cid:DCA53288-BF57-489F-B429-7F06236B7FDB@uvm.edu]



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