Word 97—Ease of Use

Proofreading

Proofing documents is a very common activity. It's clear that this is an area where advancements in the intelligence of the tools returns very high user benefits. After Word 6.0 shipped, we established an advanced linguistic research team whose goal was to deliver proofing tools that are intelligent and easy to use. Based on the research, we have made several usability improvements, overhauled our grammar checker and updated our spelling engine - all of which will result in reduced proofing time for you.

Spelling and Grammar

Word 97 combines the activity of proofreading into one easy dialog. Proofing on paper is a very common one step activity where you check for spelling and grammar errors at the same time. Word delivers an interface that that enables you to proofread online exactly like you do it on paper - instead of first checking your spelling mistakes and then checking your grammar mistakes, you now check your spelling and grammar mistakes in one pass, in one place.

Integrated Spelling and Grammar dialog

• Fix errors easily in dialog - Word now gives you the entire sentence containing the flagged text in the dialog so that you can 1) see the marked text in context of the sentence and decide whether it needs to change, 2) make your changes directly in the dialog instead of having to go back to your document.
• Proofread without grammar checking - You can still do a spell check without grammar checking by turning off the Check Grammar checkbox in the dialog.
• Assistant explains grammatical errors - So you know why Word has flagged the text in your sentence, the Office Assistant provides explanations for possible errors marked in your document.

The Assistant offers
explanations on marked text

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