Suggested Improvements to Word's proofing

Copper Contributor

There are millions of authors using Word. Most buy software outside of Word for Grammar and proofing checks, but even the expensive ones don't have anything to find "Quotation errors." 

 

if I download norebook++ and copy and paste a 100,000 Word document into the software, then use the following regular expressions code in their "find" search, it finds all quotation errors as below when they are the wrong way around, or where they have been opened and not closed, or where the author has mixed single qotes with double quotes.

 

These are examples of what the regular expressions code finds that Word proofing doesn't find. However it iis not widfely known how to find them with Notebook++ and the code.

 

“Rosa, we have to get out of this gulley.( )  (missing end quote)

( )That rain the other day is taking its toll,” I said, and handed the leaf to Rosa. (missing start quote)

(‘)Best we head back to the bunker.”  (Mixing double and single quotes)

(” )Will they attack us?”  (space causing quote to be wrong way around.)

“Jet, let go,” I said.(”)  (simple error, quote not needed)

“Good, boy, let’s go.(’)  (Mixing double and single quotes)

Giant nodded, running his finger down the list.(”)   (quote not needed placed in erroir)

 

The regular expressions code I use is -   (?!^([^“”\r\n]++|“[^“”\r\n]*”)*$)^.+

If regular expression can do this, then why can't it be converted to the code that Word uses and add it as a feature to gain a march on the competition and to improve the proofing feature.

 

One other thing is that again for us millions of authors is that Word 365 update has lost the ability to change all line breaks in a doc to section breaks without tricking the system by using regular expression and inserting  a section break in the MS with all page breaks, then copying the section break to clipboard, then doing find for a page breaks using a regular expression and then replacing with the regular expression for the copy of the section break. You do this by using ^m to find the page breaks and ^c using "wild card" to replace them with the copied section breaks. In older versions all you had to do was use ^m and then ^b  to change to section breaks which could be added from the drop down box.

 

This trick action is little known. As it is, when formatting an eBook which uses page breaks for it to work with distributors'  conversion software, to convert to either .mobi for kindle or for ePubs, the author without knowing how to trick the system then has to  then replace manually all the page breaks to section breaks for it to be formatted as a Print on Demand print book. With older version of Word, you could use regular expressions and wild card but not with the latest version of 365.

8 Replies
Have you tried Microsoft Editor?
it's available on Edge as extension, on Emails in Outlook, and on Office apps such as Word.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-editor

Appreciate the reply, but I shouldn't have to use any extension if it could be added to Word as a standard proofing option, though I'll give it a try, I have tried many of the Grammar checker software programs out there on free trials and have yet to find on that finds quotation errors. I don't have a problem as I can use the code through free notebook++, it's more for those others who don't know about how to find them. The rest of Word's proofing is fine as a grammar and spellcheck for authors.

All I am asking them to do on the page breaks to section breaks is to put it back to how it was for many years before the upgrade which has removed the auto function of replacement of page breaks to section breaks. If you have sixty chapters and you have to do it manually, that's a minimum of 1 hours toil.

Okay, I've tried the extension you suggested and it doesn't flag quote errors. Really appreciate you replying with the suggestion though.

" I shouldn't have to use any extension if it could be added to Word as a standard proofing option"
I didn't say it's only an extension.
the extension is for browser. you can't even install "extensions" on Word.

Microsoft Editor is built inside Word (Microsoft 365 version).

grammar and spellchecking in Word is nothing new, been there for years, but this one is.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-editor

you can read that page again.

it mentions:
"Punctuation conventions
Flag unnecessary commas, punctuation with quotes, sentence spacing, and other issues related to punctuation"

It's not included in the free version, and at $6.95 per month I wouldn't want to try it to find out if it works, as many say similar such as Grammarly, but they don't find the samples as in my first message, when I personally can do it for free outside of Word as described.

That price is not only for the Editor, but for the whole Microsoft 365 Personal package. $6.95 per month gives you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and 1 Terabyte of cloud storage + Microsoft Editor Premium features.

Thanks for mentioning that editor is available in Edge, i did not know that!
You're welcome :)