Proofreader - Detecting passive voice

I am working on a research paper and I can't use passive verbs. In Word, the grammar tool will catch this. Any idea how to get Pages to detect it?

Thanks.
Ronny

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 20, 2009 12:01 PM

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6 replies

Aug 20, 2009 6:51 PM in response to Ronny and Kathy Cooksey__

With all respect automated "grammar checkers" are not particularly accurate. There are PhDs written on just exactly how to define what constitutes "passive voice." Learn to proofread manually. Train your brain to recognize the passive. There really is no substitute. And if your grammar checker fails you can't claim that it wasn't your fault. I teach college students. When they write papers (not right or wright - see below) they can't claim an A instead of a C or worse because their bad spelling was the fault of their spell checker. You, not your computer is responsible for the final product. It is like your spell checker not knowing the difference between "right" and "write" and "wright." Thus you can't say that a sentence that reads - "That was the wright answer" is the fault of your computer's spell checker.

Message was edited by: fuzzydog

Message was edited by: fuzzydog

Aug 20, 2009 11:24 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Pages does not have a "proofreader"


Nor should it, or indeed any other text preparation / type publication software. Checking spelling is one thing, checking syntax and semantics is something another thing altogether.

Ten years walking the highways and byways of W's 'Philosophische Untersuchungen' and sundry subsequent publications suggests that what we would call being language or making sense is a bit more than what we would call well-formed syntax. Linguists have a hard time with the idea that their field is properly a part of ethnography/anthropology. Computational linguists have a still harder time selling to this signature the stuff they say they support -:).

/hh

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Proofreader - Detecting passive voice

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