Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Grammar-checking problems

I was working on a document that contained the sentence:
This benefit should be paid to all patients who provide a medical certificate signed by the attending physician.
The grammar-check in Word wanted to change it to:
The attending physician should pay this benefit to all patients who provide a medical certificate signed.
Stray "signed" at the end notwithstanding, the suggested sentence changes an innocent bystander to the agent, thereby requiring the attending physician to pay the patient's disability benefits out of his or her own pocket!

Moral of the story (which, of course, we all already know): never, ever accept a grammar-check suggestion without reading it and fully cognating it first!

1 comment:

Mike Todd said...

The spellchecker at my work wanted me to change "dingleberry" to "dangleberry." And yes, of course it was a work-related email.