To Bill Gates:
The next time you issue a new computer program or a new version of Word, please hire people who have not flunked high school English to create your spell and grammar checker. I offer the following as proof of one of the many mistakes it makes.
"I have a couple of books to read which are gathering dust in my bookcase."
My spell checker wants to change this to one of the following:
I have a couple of books to read which are gathering dusts in my bookcase.
or
I have a couple of books to read which is gathering dust in my bookcase.
The verb "to be" (is/are) must agree with the noun books but the spell checker does not want to do that. Somehow it considers dust as being singular whereas dusts would be plural but dust is one of those words which is both singular and plural and does not change its spelling. Couldn't we expect that Bill's spell and grammar checker could get this right? So good people in Redmond, it is either "book is" or "books are".
The next time you issue a new computer program or a new version of Word, please hire people who have not flunked high school English to create your spell and grammar checker. I offer the following as proof of one of the many mistakes it makes.
"I have a couple of books to read which are gathering dust in my bookcase."
My spell checker wants to change this to one of the following:
I have a couple of books to read which are gathering dusts in my bookcase.
or
I have a couple of books to read which is gathering dust in my bookcase.
The verb "to be" (is/are) must agree with the noun books but the spell checker does not want to do that. Somehow it considers dust as being singular whereas dusts would be plural but dust is one of those words which is both singular and plural and does not change its spelling. Couldn't we expect that Bill's spell and grammar checker could get this right? So good people in Redmond, it is either "book is" or "books are".
Spell check can be useful but it can be very annoying as well.
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